Structurally Unsound
by roqueclasique
Summary: While investigating a series of deaths in a would-be artist colony, Dean and Sam run into a problem they were completely unprepared for. PART FIVE OF THE DRIVE 'VERSE.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is a continuation of my previous multi-chapter fic "I'd Drive All Night Just to Get Back Home" and all the little fics that followed it. This one is based on an idea courtesy of neonchica; thank you!

**Oregon**

Claire has just stuffed a gigantic bite of vegan oatmeal muffin into her mouth when the doorbell rings. She chews as fast as she can, hurriedly tries to swallow, chokes on the dry crumbs just as she pulls open the door in a rush of damp, chilly air.

For a moment she's coughing too hard to take stock of her visitors, but she feels a big hand settle on her back, hears an unfamiliar male voice say, "Jesus, are you okay?"

"Fine," she gasps, squinting up through streaming eyes.

"You need some water?" A silver flask is pressed into her hand and she looks at it with suspicion, awareness returning with her breath. Water in a flask? Sketchy.

"Dean," hisses one of the men at her door, "that's _holy_—"

"Thanks, but no thanks," she says, passing the flask back, gulps air, takes control. "How can I help you guys?"

They're both wearing identical black suits underneath their jackets, and stern expressions, both taller than she, broad shouldered. The shorter one – who's not really very short, but the other guy is _huge _– is leaning on a pair of crutches that wrap around his forearm, the kind she associates with the group of disabled seniors who meet once a week at her favorite coffee shop. She briefly wonders if maybe they're here to take up some kind of collection, but they really don't look the type. They look like… feds.

"Agent Thomson, FBI," the taller one says. "This is my partner, Agent Martinez." They both flash their I.D.s.

Oh _shit._

"May we come in?" the shorter one – Martinez – asks, and she bites her lip nervously as she steps back to let them in the house, heart going a mile a minute. Who ratted her out? Only a few people know about the hydroponics operation she's got going on in her basement, and she trusts them with her life – or at least, she thought she did.

"What is this about?" she demands, practicing indignation. God, she's going to jail for life. Oh, shit. Fuck. She can't afford a lawyer.

"Claire Morelli, correct?" Agent Thomson asks.

"Yeah."

"We have a few questions about the recent deaths that have occurred in the cabin you're renovating. The cabin you plan to convert into –" he checks his notes.

"Into Copper Coppice Art Colony," Agent Martinez supplies, and is he? He is. He's _smirking. _

"It's a working title," she says, drawing herself up to her full height of six feet and tossing back her long brown hair. If this is about the deaths of the construction workers then she can relax a little, but she's still got to stay on her guard, because you can never trust the fucking feds.

"Yeah," Agent Thomson says, glances at his partner. "Mind if we sit down?"

She leads them into her kitchen and settles them at the low yellow table by the window, moves the vase of flowers out of the way because she doesn't want the bad government energy to kill them. Agent Martinez gets tangled in his crutches as he tries to shake his wrists free, and she hears a muttered "Goddammit" as one falls to the floor with a clatter.

Agent Thomson gives his partner a pained look of disgust as he leans forward the pick the crutch up and prop it against the table.

"What?" Martinez says. "These things are fucking complicated."

"Yeah, if you're retarded," Thomson snaps, then shoots Claire a nervous glance.

"Sorry," Martinez says, offers her a surprisingly warm grin, and fed or no fed, she'd tap that in a heartbeat. "Just getting used to 'em."

"What happened?" she asks, because it seems polite.

"Mobster," Martinez says. "Shot."

"Shit," she says.

"So, Miss Morelli," Thomson begins, clears his throat as the kettle behind her begins to whistle.

"You guys want some tea?" she asks, because she's trying not to be prejudiced, though it's difficult when it comes to Republicans or government agents. It's a flaw of character, something she's still working on through meditation.

"I would love a cup," Martinez announces. "And so would Agent Thomson."

"Thanks," Thomson says weakly.

"Muffin?" she asks, gesturing to the pan still cooling on the stove. "Made them myself. Theyre vegan."

"Vegan?" asks Martinez. "Is that some kind of fruit?"

"It means that no animal products were used," Thomson explains, in a tone of voice that suggests he might do a lot explaining. "No eggs, or butter, no milk."

"Uh, I'll pass," Martinez says, wrinkling his nose.

"I'll take one," Thomson says, and _hello dimples. _Who knew? She begins to feel like she's in a bad porn movie, except without the porn. Just the sexy agents. Begone, anti-feminist thoughts!

She shakes her head, pours the tea, drops the muffin onto a ceramic plate her best friend Sky made last week, pulls up a chair for herself.

"Begin your questioning," she says.

"You were left the deed to the cabin by your late father, Nick Morelli, correct?" Martinez asks, and his casual demeanor suddenly melts away, all business.

"Yes," Claire says, snorts. "Only nice thing the asshole ever did for me."

The two men exchange a glance. "Would you say your father had many enemies?" Thomson asks.

"Uh, yeah. He owed money to half the people in this town when he died."

"He was a drinker, is that right?"

"He was a _drunk._" Claire fixes them each with a glare, because it's taken her a while to get to this place, to be able to say something like that out loud without feeling guilty or embarrassed, and she doesn't want anyone to sugar coat anything. She's done with sugar coating.

"Do you know how often your father went to the cabin?" Thomson asks.

"Not often. Couple times a month, tops. I mean, the place is falling down. It's not safe yet. He just went every so often with his drinking buddies, for a change of pace."

"But he was alone when he died."

"Apparently."

"Autopsy lists his cause of death as having fallen down the porch stairs. Is that how you understand it?"

"Yeah, but," she shakes her head, "what does all this have to do with," she hesitates, because it hurts to say it, "those guys who died."

"Everything is connected, Miss Morelli," Martinez says grandly. "We're getting to that."

"We'll get to it right now," Thomson says. "One man died from a power surge through a wire he thought was dead, yes?"

"That's what they tell me."

"And then another accidentally," Thomson winces, "put a power drill through his skull?"

"I don't really get the logistics of that one, but again, it's what I've been told."

"And the third man was decapitated by his own chain saw," Thomson states.

"That's just fuckin' nasty," Martinez shudders.

"Yeah," Claire says. They all sip their tea simultaneously, wipe their mouths.

"Are you planning on continuing the renovations?" Martinez asks.

"Well, yeah, I guess, I mean, I don't know," Claire says. "It's been my dream since I was sixteen, to have an artists colony. I graduated from school two years ago and I've just been fucking around. I want to get my life started, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. But…" she trails off, swallows. It's all so fresh, the guilt, the sorrow. "I don't know. I don't know if I can… I feel like it's my fault, you know? Those guys. I sent them to their death. I don't know if I can do that again." She shrugs convulsively. "I don't know what I'm going to do, to be honest."

They nod, and she's surprised to see that they actually do look sympathetic.

"By the time our investigation is over, the house should be safe," Thomson says gently. "And you can get back to your… colony."

"Safe?" she says. "Why are the feds involved, anyway?"

"Following orders, ma'am," Martinez says, finishes his tea with a gulp. "Well. Thank you very much. We may have further questions for you in the next few days."

"Okay," she says, looks away somewhat uncomfortably as he struggles to his feet and gets himself situated on the crutches. She wonders for a moment this is a front, if Martinez is acting to gain her sympathy, but then she catches Thomson watching him with a worried look on his face, and she knows neither of them are faking. Not this anyway; there's something about them that seems a bit off, and she _always _trusts her psychic instincts.

It strikes her all of a sudden that they're both awfully young; Thomson, especially, looks even younger than she is. She walks them to the door, notices how Thomson kind of hovers at Martinez's elbow, thinks maybe they're not just agent partners, but _partners _partners. Such a porno. God.

"We'd like to check out the cabin," Thomson says. "It's through the woods down in back of the house, right?"

"Yeah," she says, trying not to be creeped out by the fact that they knew that. Feds know everything. She gives Martinez and his crutches a doubtful look and adds, "It's like two miles, though. And kind of muddy. You might have some trouble."

"Don't worry about me, sweetheart," Martinez says, but his cocky grin fades a little under her glare. No agent in a suit gets to call her sweetheart, even if he has a gunshot wound and is gay for his partner.

"Two miles?" Thomson asks.

"Yeah." She hesitates, then says, "Listen, I could take you down there on the golf cart, if you wanted." What the hell. These guys seem like real people, even if they are meat-eating corporate whores.

"We're fine, thanks," Martinez says at the same time Thomson says, "Golf cart?"

"Yeah," she says. "That's what the construction workers use to get down there. I got it cheap on Ebay."

"We're fine," Martinez says again, but Thomson says, "That would be great!"

"Let me just get the keys," she says, hopes no one sees her aiding and abetting the government. She'd never live it down.

As soon as she's disappeared into the house, Dean turns and wacks Sam with one of his crutches.

"Dude! What were you thinking? How the hell are we supposed to look into this place if that crazy hippie chick is standing right there? We're just gonna pull out the salt and the EMF and tell her it's all part and parcel of covert ops?"

"She's not gonna stay there with us," Sam says. "She'll just drop us off. I think. Besides, two miles, Dean? Admit it, that would take us an hour and half."

"That's why we bought the hiking gear!" Dean says, lifting his arms and letting the crutches dangle from his wrists.

"We bought those because your _acupuncturist _suggested it," Sam says. "And if you don't pipe down and accept the ride, I'm telling Claire you're the biggest fan of Chinese medicine she'll ever meet. See how you like that conversation."

"You're a conniving son of a bitch," Dean says, shuts his mouth as Claire appears at the door, wrapped in a thick, sky blue wool sweater and jingling a pair of keys.

Sam is never ever in a million years going to say this out loud, but he thinks Claire is kind of cute. In a crunchy, probably-doesn't-shave-her-pits kind of way.

"Come on," she says, and the brothers follow dutifully.

The golf cart in the back of the house isn't like any golf cart Dean's ever seen; it's more of a bizarre, cart-contraption with big, tractioned wheels, two seats in front and a little stool-like thing in back, all tucked under a lime green metal roof. The color is bright and cheerful against the monotonous grey of the air. It's been drizzling for the past few days, cold and steady, but it's a hell of a lot better than the snow they just drove out of, even if the dampness does make Dean's leg ache. Pretty much any weather makes his leg ache, except warm and dry. If he lives to retirement age, he's going to Texas. Hot, sunny, and armadillos. Awesome.

"Agent Thomson, you'll have to sit in the back. Sorry if it's a little cramped. Agent Martinez, you sit up front with me, where it's more comfortable," Claire says, climbing into the driver's seat and sweeping her long skirt underneath. Dean catches a glimpse of biker boots and feels a grudging twinge of respect.

He stares at the peculiar cart for a moment, mapping out how he's gonna do this, and Claire holds out her hand.

"I got it," he says, but she shakes her head impatiently.

"Your crutches," she says.

"Oh," he says, hands them to her one by way, wavers a little on his good leg before grabbing the seat and the roof and hoisting himself up, settles himself into the front seat with a thump and a wince.

Claire's watching him out of the corner of her eye, like she's assessing him, and he thinks that this chick might be too sharp for her own good, even if she is kind of a wack job. She constantly has the expression Sam gets when he's doing research: shrewd and searching and not a little disturbing.

Sam has folded himself onto the little stool in the rear, knees practically to his chin, and he grips the back of Dean's seat as Claire starts the cart with a growl of the engine.

"Bio-diesel," she says proudly, as the smell of French fries fills the air.

Dean has no idea what she's talking about, but Sam says "_Cool!_" and Claire beams at him. Dean suddenly feels left out. Fuckin' college kids. Though Sam was always kind of a closet hippie.

Even though the trees are mostly bare, and the air is pretty fucking cold, the drive through the woods is kind of nice. The vegetation is clearly thick, and the dark branches of the trees stand out in relief against the white sky. Dean bets it would be beautiful in the summer, and, okay, not like he knows anything about artists, but if he were an artist he could see the appeal of coming to a place like this to work.

They hit a bump and he lets out a hiss of pain before he can stop himself, grips the sides of the cart.

"You okay?" Claire sends him a sideways glance that's almost mocking.

He nods tightly, adjusts his tie. "Fine."

"Where were you hit?" she asks, and it takes him a moment to remember what she's talking about.

"Uh, knee," he says, then realizes that he's sitting hip-shot, leaning on his good side, and adds, "and my hip."

"You say the construction workers used this cart?" Sam asks from the back.

"Yeah."

"What hours did they work?"

"Eight to four, usually," Claire says. "There's only about a week's worth of work done. The porch is all finished, the plumbing's been put in, but it's still kind of a piece of shit. Picture it fixed up, a huge garden, shutters painted yellow… that kind of thing." She snorts. "Don't know why I bother mentioning gardens to the FBI."

"Hey," Sam protests. "We garden."

"Speak for yourself," Dean says, starts to say something else but falls silent as they break out of the trees and into a large clearing, the cabin nestled in the middle, looking completely derelict with it's broken, sagging roof and dilapidated walls of old, crumbling wood.

Sam glances at his brother, expecting him to make some crack about starving artists or something, but is stunned to see that the color is draining from Dean's face, his cheeks paling so quickly it looks like they're being painted. He watches Dean's adam's apple bob as he swallows, sees his hands shake as he tugs at his tie like it's suddenly choking him.

"Hey," Sam says, grips his brother's shoulder. "You all right?"

Dean opens his mouth, closes it, tries again, but can't seem to get the words out. Claire's staring at them now, but Sam can't be bothered to care, just shakes Dean hard, says, "Hey," again, really worried now, "Dean, talk to me, man! Dean!"

But Dean just lets out a little gasp like he's having trouble breathing, folds an arm over his chest, and passes out.

To be continued…


	2. Chapter 2

When Dean comes to and a bird is calling from somewhere in the distance, he thinks for a moment that it's the beep of hospital equipment, and he opens his eyes expecting to see the white of hospital walls, feel the dull thump of drugs running through his veins. He comes to expecting to be alone.

But instead, he sees Sam's huge head, his brother's little eyes opened about as wide as they can go, mouth moving frantically in what Dean recognizes as his own name.

"Dean! Dean!"

Dean blinks, realizes that he's lying on the damp, muddy ground in his only good suit.

"The fuck?" he asks, leveraging himself to his elbows, not sure what happened. Then he sees a girl's face, anxious and curious, framed by long, wavy hair, and he remembers.

Claire. The carpenters. The cabin, that looks so much like that other cabin.

He closes his eyes against a wave of dizziness that threatens to engulf him, takes a deep breath. For a moment, before he'd lost consciousness, he'd been right back where he was eight months ago, so real, wood dust in his nose and no solid ground beneath his feet, the instant of realization when he knew that there was nothing to grab onto. Pain.

"Hey," Sam is saying, is pressing a hand to Dean's chest. "Breathe, man, breathe!"

Dean shakes his head, sucks in a noisy breath, and reality fades slowly back into his vision.

And now he's just really fucking embarrassed. _Really _fucking embarrassed, because he just fainted like a little girl, and he still can't look at that cabin.

"Dean?" Sam says.

"I'm fine," Dean rasps, clears his throat. "Got dizzy for a second."

"Dude, you fell out of the golf cart."

"Yeah," Dean says, wincing as he tries to sit up. "Fuckin' meds. Doctors warned me about this."

"You think this is an effect of the vicodin?" Sam asks. "How many did you take today, man?"

"Doubled the dose," Dean says, which is not true, for once.

"That could do it," Claire chimes in. "You shouldn't trust pharmaceuticals unless you make them yourself."

"Amen," Dean groans. Glances at Sam, whose carefully slicked-back hair is giving way to its natural shagginess, knees of his suit covered in mud and grass stains, and then takes inventory of himself, dirty and laying on the ground like he's trying to become one with the earth, hyperventilating and blabbing about pain meds. They are maybe some of the worst FBI agents ever.

"Help me up," he directs, and Sam pulls him to his feet, helps him lean up against the golf cart. His whole right side is throbbing from where he fell. Funny, he could use a vicodin right now, but that would be pretty damn suspicious considering the excuse he made a moment ago.

"I just," he says, feeling around in his jacket pockets, "I just need to smoke a cigarette and then I'll be all right."

"Except for the cancer," Claire says, and Dean shoots her a withering glare as Sam grins.

He turns away to light his smoke because he doesn't want either of them to see how badly his hands are shaking. It takes a couple tries but finally he gets it lit and can turn back, already a little calmer.

"You sure you're all right?" Sam asks, puts a big hand on Dean's elbow and squeezes in what he apparently thinks is a gesture of comfort.

"I'm fine," Dean says, shaking him off. "Yeah. Just. Yeah, I've gotta lay off the vicodin."

"You know, there are more natural pain meds available," Claire says.

"Like opium?" Dean snorts, then remembers that federal agents really aren't supposed to talk about drugs. Claire seems to have remembered it too, because she flushes for a moment and looks terrified before turning away.

It's started drizzling again, and the air feels like it's gotten a couple degrees colder in the past half hour, and Dean suppresses a shiver. He's got to get a grip.

Slowly, trying to play it off like he's just stretching his neck, he turns his head towards the cabin.

He can feel his heartrate climb, but he doesn't even come close to passing out this time, and the vivid, intense flashback he'd experienced is only a flicker of memory in his mind, the sound of cracking wood, darkness.

The cabin doesn't really look anything like that other cabin back in South Dakota; it's in better shape, for one thing, with a shiny new porch and a roof that, for the most part, looks like it might keep out the rain.

And it's not even like Dean remembers much, except for that sickening feeling of the floor dropping out from underneath his feet, the throbbing, relentless pain that characterized the next month and a half or so. The red lights of the ambulance, and maybe his father gripping his hand, though he can't be sure about the last part.

He'd told Sam a couple days ago that he'd had running dreams for a while – but he'd left out the part about how they had always, without fail, turned into falling dreams. For months he'd fall in a terrifying plunge every time he closed his eyes, night after night, and he'd wake up gasping for air, soaked in sweat, leg screaming like it had snapped all over again.

In the hospital – and this is also something he's never going to tell Sam, never going to tell _anyone _– he'd gone through some mandatory group counseling, _learning to live with a disability_, that kind of crap. Compared to the others in the group he was pretty well off; there was a woman who'd lost her eyesight in a chemical spill, a older man who'd gotten his arm completely mangled by a snowmobile, and a guy named Steve around his age who'd fallen off a cliff while rock climbing and had to have his leg amputated.

Dean had gotten to be pretty good friends with Steve, for the month they were in the hospital together – it was a circumstantial friendship, to be sure, born out of the fact that they were both twenty-five and bored out of their skulls, and the majority of their conversations centered around women and drinking stories and how much it sucked not to be able to walk. And the fact that they both had dreams where they re-lived their falls, over and over.

"I can barely look out of a third-floor window anymore," Steve had confessed in counseling one day. "I used to live for climbing. Now what the fuck am I supposed to live for?"

Dean had _never _liked heights, and after he fell he found that he was almost paralyzed by them. He remembers being wheeled up to the eighth floor for physical therapy, how the doors had slid open on a huge picture window that overlooked the town, how he thought for one second that he was going to pass out – but he hadn't.

Seeing this cabin was like that, but a thousand times worse. Cause, yeah. He _had _passed out this time. Which is. Completely mortifying.

He takes a drag of his cigarette, realizes suddenly that neither Claire nor Sam have said anything at all for the past three minutes, have just been standing there silently, watching him smoke.

"Okay!" he says, his voice so falsely cheerful that even he is disgusted. "Let's get this investigation on the road!" He finishes his cigarette and moves to toss it on the ground, but Claire stops him with a hand to his arm.

"Please don't throw that on the earth," she says. "Put it in your pocket."

He complies, turns to Sam.

"You sure you're all right?" he asks Dean.

"Totally."

Sam eyes him, sighs, nods. "We shouldn't be more than a half hour," Sam says to Claire. "If you don't want to come down and pick us up, that's fine. We can probably manage the walk; the ground didn't look too bad."

"Oh, I'll just stay," she says, and Dean gives Sam the most eloquent non-verbal I-freakin-told-you-so he's got.

"Fine," Sam sighs, ignores Dean's wiggling eyebrows. "Let's go."

Dean manages about three steps before he realizes that he probably isn't going to be able to do this.

"Hey, Agent Thomson," he says. "Maybe today's not the best day to go in there."

Sam and Claire both look at him like he's insane. "What are you _talking _about?" Sam asks.

"I mean," Dean waves his hand a little. "It's raining."

"So?"

"It could be dangerous."

"Martinez, it's broad daylight," Sam says. "If it's… _critters_… you're worried about, we're prepared."

"Right," Dean says, and Sam turns around. Dean takes another step towards the cabin, stops. It feels like a steel band is tightening around his lungs, and his vision's going blurry at the edges again. He grips his crutches, closes his eyes, wills himself to stay upright.

"Hey," he hears Claire say. "Agent Thomson. Something's wrong."

Then Sam's hands are on Dean's shoulders, shaking him. "Dean! Dean, jesus!"

"Agent Thomson," Claire says in a tone of reproach, and there's a smacking noise, a yelp from Sam, and his hands are replaced by Claire's, slim and cool, patting Dean's cheek.

"Agent Martinez," she says gently. "Dean. You're really freaking out."

"Yeah," he admits, eyes still closed.

"Just breathe through it, all right? It's like a bad trip."

"Yeah," Dean breathes, because she's right, it _does _feel like a bad trip, and when he thinks about it like that, it's easier to manage.

When he opens his eyes, Sam is looking at him with renewed understanding and something akin to horror.

"Oh, Dean," he says. "Is it…" he gestures to the cabin, gestures to Dean's crutches. "Are you…?"

"Little bit," Dean says, closes his eyes again. "Yeah."

"Well, okay," Sam says. "Okay. You just stay out here. Okay? I'll check things out, and you… why don't you just go sit down?"

"No!" Dean says, feels panic grip his heart again. "Don't—Sam, it's not safe." God, he knows he sounds like an idiot, and this fear he feels, it's completely unreasonable and irrational and he _knows _that; but knowing doesn't make it go away.

"Dude," Sam says. "One of us has got to go in there and check things out. People have been walking around in that cabin for the past week, and no one got – well, okay, people got hurt, but not because of _that._"

"Just don't," Dean says. "You need backup."

"I'll only be ten minutes," Sam says. "Do you want people to keep dying?"

How the fuck is Dean supposed to argue with that? "Dude," he says. "Please. Be careful."

"Of course I'll be careful."

Dean can't watch Sam go in, lets Claire lead him back to the golf cart and push him gently down till he's sitting on the hood.

He shakes out another cigarette from his pack, wishes he could go for the flask of whiskey he's got in his jacket pocket next to the holy water, but he's given Claire enough clues that he's not really an agent.

"You all right?" she asks.

"Fucked if I know," he mutters around the filter, flicking his lighter with a hiss and a crackle.

"What are you so frightened of?" she asks. "Are you worried it's haunted?"

He nearly chokes on his cigarette, stares at her with wide eyes.

She pats him absently on the back, keeps talking. "Because if you're worried it's haunted, you've got nothing to fear. I did a smudging ceremony before I started any work on it."

"You did?"

"Of course. I told you, my father was an asshole. There was a lot of bad energy in that place."

Dean is silent, considering. Interesting that the smudging didn't work. It's not the most foolproof way to put down a vengeful spirit, but it's definitely been proven effective more than once, if performed before the spirit has a chance to harm anyone.

"Where's your father buried?" Dean asks, because he and Sam have been figuring this for a classic case of vengeful spirit. Nasty old man gets killed in his cabin, hangs around the place to be a nasty old ghost.

"Oh, he's not buried."

"What?"

"We cremated him."

Bones burned? That puts kind of a damper on the theory, then. Dean casts a speculative look back at the cabin.

If it's not Jane's father, then what is it?

Suddenly a loud _crack _sounds from the house, followed by a _bang, _and all the windows of the cabin start to rattle.

Dean's heart leaps up into his mouth and then takes a swan dive towards his stomach.

"Sam!" he shouts, already pushing himself to his feet and grappling with his crutches. He starts forward as there's another _crack _and then a _bang _and then he can physically see the windows of the cabin start to rattle.

The door swings open before he's taken three steps, and his brother hurtles himself down the porch, face a mask of pain, one arm clamped around his chest and blood streaming down into his eyes.

"We've got to get out of here!" Sam gasps. "Now!"


	3. Chapter 3

Claire prides herself on her ability to drive like a maniac when the occasion calls for it, and right now, she kinda thinks the occasion's calling.

Agent Martinez – Dean – is cramped in the back, his crutches clutched between his legs, and Thomson is up front, white-faced, groaning with every bump. Dean's leaning forward, gripping Thomson's shoulders so he doesn't bounce off.

"Sam," he says urgently, "you okay? How bad is it?"

"I'm fine," Agent—okay, Sam— gasps, "I'm fine, it's, fuck, my ribs –"

"What did this? Did you see it?"

Sam just shakes his head, white-knuckles the side of the cart.

Claire's concentrating pretty intently on not running them into a tree, so she can't focus too hard on his words, but she does notice the strangeness of the questions. _What _did this. Did you see _it._

She parks the cart in the back of the house with a squeal of brakes, says, "I'll call an ambulance, let me—"

"No!" Dean says sharply. "No ambulance. Just help me get him in the house."

"I got it," Sam says, wincing, as Dean attempts to juggle his crutches and his partner at the same time. "Really, it's not so bad. I can walk."

But his legs buckle a little as he takes a step, and Dean's right there, wedging a shoulder under his. Claire runs to unlock the back door, holds it as Sam and Dean pass through. Sam's leaning on Dean, who's leaning on his crutches, and Claire leans against the door.

"Shit," Dean says, gazes at the six enormous, steep cement steps that lead up from the tiny basement to the main house. "How the fuck am I supposed to... Claire, can you help Sam?"

"Yeah," she says, wriggles up under Sam's long arm. She's a tall girl, a little over six feet, but Sam – Sam is a giant. She's not sure she's going to be any help.

She is, though, along with the railing, and Sam takes the steps carefully but steadily, breath coming in shallow, pained gasps.

She glances back and finds Dean still staring at the stairs, furrowed brow.

"Take Sam into the kitchen," Dean orders. "Do you have a first aid kit? Towels?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Can you get that stuff ready? I'll be up in a second."

"How are you going to—"

"I'm gonna scoot up on my ass," Dean says grimly, and when she doesn't move, he says, "I'm serious. Get out of here."

"He's serious," Sam mumbles, takes a couple tripping steps by himself, and she follows, guides him into the kitchen and steers him to a chair.

"Will you be okay if I leave you alone for a minute?" she asks, and Sam nods, drips blood onto her yellow linoleum tiled floor.

By the time she gets back with the first aid kit and her softest towels – she's never been queasy about a few bloodstains here and there – Dean is standing over Sam with his sleeves rolled up, suit jacket shucked onto the floor, crutches propped up against the table. He's got one hand on the back of Sam's chair for balance and the other gripping Sam's chin, turning his face this way and that.

"No concussion," Dean says, glances up at Claire.

"Here," she says, puts the first aid kit on the table, wrings her hands nervously. Actually _wrings her hands_, like some distressed housewife. "What can I do?"

"You can relax," Dean says. "He's just a little banged up. Nothin' too serious."

"M'fine," Sam agrees, then, "OW!" as Dean pours peroxide into the gash on his forehead.

Dean says, "Sorry, princess," but he really does look sorry, winces a little in sympathy and rips open a pack of gauze with his teeth. "You cut anywhere else?"

"No."

"Your ribs, they broken?"

"No. Cracked, though, I think."

"Isn't that something you should have a medical professional diagnose?" Claire blurts out.

"Sam was the king of broken ribs when we were growing up," Dean says. "He knows 'em when he feels 'em."

Claire thinks, growing up? Childhood friends _and_ FBI agent partners?

"So what the fuck happened in there?" Dean asks, taping down a strip of gauze with a practiced gesture, wiping a bloody hand across his white shirt. Claire never realized the FBI was so … No. She will not think _badass. _She will not think _badass. _Too late. _Badass._

"I was walking around, EMFing the place," Sam says, "and it seemed like it was all clean. Then I walked past the staircase and the thing just went _off._"

What the hell is he talking about?

"The stairs were kind of falling apart, so I went up them slow, and –"

"Hang on," Dean says, and Claire can see the color leave his face, thinks for a second he's going to keel over like he did before. "You're telling me you climbed up a crumbling staircase? Sam, that shit is _dangerous, _you could have—"

"Dean," Sam says with mock-patience. "It wasn't the _stairs _that hurled a ten-foot wooden beam at my chest outta nowhere. It wasn't the _stairs _that peeled a wooden board off the wall and flung it at my head. It wasn't the _stairs _that starting shaking the whole goddamn cabin like it was its own mini earthquake."

"What _was _it?" Claire asks, only because it seems like the logical question, not because she has any fucking idea what's going on.

"I don't know," Sam says, looks at Dean meaningfully. "I didn't see anything."

"Non-corporeal?"

"Must be. Or… telekinetic?"

"Claire says she smudged the house _and _burned the old man's bones," Dean says, places, with visible satisfaction, a small pink band-aid over a cut on Sam's cheek.

"She _what?_" Sam turns and gives her an incredulous look, and she takes a step back.

"What?"

"Is she a –?"

"No," Dean says. "Just good instincts." He gives her an approving look that she shoots down with a glare, because she doesn't understand what the hell it means, and she's not gonna let some smartass fed in a cheap tie talk down to her.

"Listen," she says, because this is _her _house, goddammit, FBI or no FBI; she has rights as an American citizen. And one of those rights is freedom of… knowing… or something. "One of you better explain what just happened. _Now._"

"No clue," Dean says, gives Sam a gentle pat on the shoulder. "You're all set."

"I mean, down there? Agent Thomson, what _happened_?" She appeals to Sam, because Dean strikes her as a master at deflection, and she just wants a straight answer.

But Sam just turns earnest eyes on her and says, "We really don't know yet, Claire. But we're going to find out."

"That's not an answer."

She watches the two men – _boys, _she realizes – exchange a glance, give each other brief nods, come to a decision without saying a word.

"Uh, so, yeah," Dean says, runs a hand through his close-cropped hair. "We're not really FBI agents."

Claire says "_What_?" but is surprised to find that she's not actually that surprised.

"Yeah. We came to investigate your cabin because we don't think those deaths were accidental. We think they were caused by something else. Something… supernatural."

"_What?_" And okay, now she's kind of surprised.

"Yeah. We were thinkin' it was your father's vengeful spirit, you know, an angry ghost, but you said you burned his bones, so that idea's out, because if your bones are burned you can't come back to haunt shit. So, at the moment, we're not entirely sure what we're dealing with here. But I promise you, Claire, I promise you that we are good at what we do, and we're gonna hunt down whatever it is and get it the hell out of your Coffin Copper art colony."

Claire opens her mouth, closes it, meets two pairs of solemn eyes. "Okay," she says. "Okay. First things first. One: you are both complete assholes for scaring me shitless with your FBI crap."

"Sorry," Dean says, and raises an eyebrow, grins a little. "What's got you so nervous 'bout the long arm of the law, huh?"

"Second," she says, ignoring him, "you do know that you sound fucking insane, right?"

"Yeah, we know," Sam says. "But you saw what happened to me just now. That wasn't natural. And those carpenters? They were good men; they didn't deserve what happened to them. We just don't want anyone else to get hurt, Claire. We're telling the truth. You could really help us with this, if you'd just trust us."

"Let me just process for a second here," she says, sinks down into a kitchen chair. Dean lowers himself down across from her, and she watches as he gingerly stretches out his leg, shifts in his seat with a grimace, one hand pressed to his hip.

Why, she asks herself, would someone with a gunshot wound who can barely walk want to trek down to a deserted cabin in the cold rain? Why would Sam want to get himself beat up by, by whatever?

They are crazy. It is clear. But they're not, she doesn't think, liars. And she always trusts her instincts.

"Okay," she says finally. "I believe you."

"Awesome," Dean says fervently as he reaches down for his jacket, rummaging through the pockets. "That's going to make our job a hell of a lot easier."

"So what are you, ghost hunters?"

"Something like that," Dean says, shaking a couple white pills out of a Ziploc baggie, dry-swallowing them with suspicious ease.

"Sam," he says, "you want one of these? For your ribs?"

Sam hesitates. "Yeah."

"What is that?" Claire asks.

"Vicodin," Sam says, starts to get up and stops with a little groan of pain.

"Water?" she says, and Sam nods, looks grateful.

"Can I have one of those?" she asks, running the tap, and Dean snorts a laugh.

"You serious? Thought you didn't like pharmaceuticals."

She hands Sam the glass of water, puts her hands on her hips. "It's been a stressful day for me, too, you know."

Dean tilts his head like _you're-the-boss-you-crazy-ho_, shakes out another pill.

"Just one?" she asks. "You took two."

"Jesus, woman," Dean says. "That's cause I'm in _pain._"

Fair enough. She snags Sam's water glass, swallows it down.

"All right," Dean says, jiggling his good leg up and down, drumming his fingers on the countertop. "Now that you've compromised my integrity and forced me to play drug-dealer, you mind answering a couple questions?"

"Not until you answer some of mine."

"Such as?"

"Such as, are these ghosts going to come up here and kill me in my sleep?"

Dean snorts a "No," then appears to re-think it. "At least, I don't think so. I mean, I seriously doubt it."

Doubt it. Great. "What _are _they going to do?"

"We don't know. That's why we need your cooperation. To find out."

Claire settles herself into the chair next to Sam, crosses her long legs and leans forward. "Fine. Ask your questions."

Dean shifts his weight, wincing a little, and his face becomes serious, FBI Agent Martinez again. "Has anyone ever lived in that cabin?"

"Yeah. My father grew up there."

"Anyone ever died in there, besides your father?"

"Not that I know of," Claire says.

"When was it left empty? I mean, when did people stop living in it?"

"When my father was about seventeen, I think. His family used it for storage, for a while. I went down once or twice, when I was a kid, and there was just junk everywhere; old televisions, birdcages, that kind of thing. My grandmother always said it stressed her out. She was kind of a neat freak."

"We need to do some more research, Dean," Sam says. "Library, town records. Man. I thought this was going to be so easy."

"Nothin's easy," Dean says, tapping his open palm against the table in a rhythmic thwap-thwap that's going to drive Claire crazy if he keeps it up. Twitchy much? Jesus. "Listen," he says, thwap-thwap-thwap. "It's getting late. Sam, what say you and I blow this popcorn stand? Food, library? Find a motel?"

"Popsicle stand, and it's Sunday," Claire says, feeling mildly frantic, because _no way _does she want to be left alone in her house when there is a homicidal whatever on the loose. "The library's closed. Everything's closed. And all the motels are shitty. I have food, and a fold-out couch. You should stay here."

"What kind of food are we talking?" Dean asks. "Bunny food? Sprouts?"

"Yeah!" she says. "I totally have sprouts!"

"That's really nice of you," Sam starts, but she doesn't let him finish.

"It's my haunted cabin," she says with a toss of her hair. "And you're, you know, vanquishing the evil ghost. It's the least I can do, save you guys some money. And besides, if the ghosts _do _come up here—"

"They're not gonna."

"But if they _do…_" She eyes them. All right, if there is a ghoulish migration from cabin to house, the Agen — the ghost-hunters probably wouldn't actually be much help, Sam with one arm bracing his cracked ribs, Dean with his ass-scooting stair-climbing technique… but seriously. They're better than nothing.

Sam and Dean look at each other, and, what, do they have some sort of code? She watches, but they don't blink, or make hand signals, just nod infinitesimally and turn back towards her.

"Yeah," Dean says. "Okay. If you're really gonna feed us."

"I will totally feed you," she declares.

"Do you have wireless?" Sam asks anxiously, and she cringes. This is a sore subject.

"Yeah," she admits.

"Okay," Dean says, clapping his hands together once and pushing himself to his feet. "Now that that's settled, I'm going to excuse myself for a moment, if you ladies don't mind."

Sam rolls his eyes like he's used to being called a woman, and she wonders again about their relationship.

"Uh, so what's your relationship?" she asks. "Like, partners? Friends? Lovers?"

"Brothers," Dean says, shrugging on his jacket, and okay, that makes a lot of sense.

"You going outside?" Sam asks, and Dean nods.

"I'll come," Sam says, "get our stuff from the Impala."

"Impala?" Claire asks, and Dean gives her a pained look.

"My car," he says, situating himself on the crutches as Sam rises with a slow exhale of air, grimacing. Vicodin hasn't quite kicked in yet, but she can feel it, climbing on the edge of her consciousness, slow and easy and languid…

Oh, man. She's just invited two very attractive completely beat-up fake FBI ghost-hunting pill-popping panic-attack-having men to spend the night in her home.

It _sucks _that they're brothers.

Once they're outside, Dean pauses to light a cigarette, glances at Sam, who's sipping the air in slow, careful breaths. He knows from experience that cracked ribs seriously blow. They make you aware of every movement and breath you'd otherwise take for granted, and it gets to be completely exhausting.

It's his fault, he knows, and curses himself, fists clenching tight around his crutches. If he'd only been in the cabin with Sam – but just the thought sends a spike of panic up through his spine, makes his heart lurch. What the _hell. _He hasn't had a falling nightmare for months, hasn't thought about it, even. Why _now_?

You're fucking up left and right, Winchester, he thinks, takes a long drag. Going in unarmed save for some holy water, salt, and an EMF. Letting Sam go in alone, great move there. _Fainting _at the sight of some dilapidated shack just because, once upon a time, you made a dumb mistake you'll spend the rest of your life regretting.

He needs to pull himself together. There's no way Sam can take this case alone. He's got to man up, quit being such a gigantic pussy, put aside this ridiculous fear and just walk into the—

"Dean!" Sam says. "Dude, you're hyperventilating again."

I am? Dean thinks, then, Oh, yeah.

"We're gonna have to talk about this," Sam says.

"I need a drink," Dean answers.

To be continued…


	4. Chapter 4

As it turns out, Claire's not only got food, she's also got _mad skills _in the kitchen, as she puts it.

"What about jello?" Dean asks, obviously thinking he's found a loophole. "Do you eat jello? Do you have any idea what gelatin's made of?"

"Yes, I know what it's made of, and no, I don't eat it," Claire says primly, taking down a box of long brown noodles.

"Soba," Sam breathes reverently, suddenly flooded with memories.

"Excuse you?" Dean says, raising an eyebrow.

"These noodles," Sam explains. "Je—I used to eat them all the time at Stanford."

Dean nods, doesn't make any of the jokes that Sam knows are on the tip of his tongue. Jess is the one thing his brother will never, ever make fun of, and for that he is grateful.

Claire might eat freaky things like sprouted lentils and scuba noodles, but Dean is visibly relieved to find that she drinks like any normal human being and has a full case of Pabst Blue Ribbon sitting unopened in the bottom of her fridge.

"I figured you for a locally-brewed kind of gal," Dean says, cracking a beer and taking a long swig.

"Yeah, well," she says, leaves it at that.

While Sam ices his ribs, Claire sets Dean up at the table with a pile of vegetables to chop.

"The rhythm of it might chill you out," she says.

"I am chilled out!" he says indignantly, but only gets through the carrots before excusing himself to go smoke a cigarette, takes a second beer with him.

As the door bangs behind him, Claire turns to Sam and gives him an eyebrow-raise that would make even Dean proud.

"He all right?" she asks.

"Probably not," Sam says. "But he will be."

"What's got him so tweaked?" Claire asks, twisting the cap off a huge bottle of soy sauce.

Sam hesitates, doesn't think Dean would want him spilling the whole story to this girl they just met.

"Is it the ghosts?" she says. "Cause I would have thought he'd be used to it by now, if this is what you guys, like, _do_."

"It's not the ghosts," Sam says, laughs at the thought of Dean getting frightened by spirits. "He just. He had a bad experience, once, in a run-down cabin like yours."

"So does this happen every time you see something like that?"

"I don't think we've seen one till this afternoon. Not since it happened."

"Weird," she says. "Must have been a pretty bad experience."

"Yeah," Sam says. "It was, I guess. And Dean… the thing is, Dean probably hasn't even really let himself think about it. He tends to kind of suppress that kind of stuff."

"So this is like, years and years of trauma just spilling out now?"

"Months." He grins a little, shakes his head. "I took psych, sophomore year, and ever since then, I can't help but use it on everyone I know. And these days, I kind of only know Dean. So he gets analyzed like, all the time, and he has no idea."

Claire laughs, turns to light the burner on her gas stove.

Sam watches the flare of the match, then turns to crane his head a little to look out the window. He can see the slouch of Dean's back where he sits on the front steps, smoke sifting up and dragging down in the drizzling rain.

He feels a surge of guilt, and thinks for a moment that it's the old guilt, the guilt of not being there when Dean needed him, but realizes after a moment that this is new. Claire lights another burner, another hiss and puff of flame, and Sam wonders why he doesn't react every time he sees fire. The first few days or so after Jess's death, every time his brother lit a cigarette (which was all the time) Sam would cringe, but he got over it pretty quickly. And he never came close to passing out, like Dean did.

It's crazy, wishing for a panic attack, but he can't help but feel that something's wrong with him, that he can watch smoke and fire and not be reduced to the pale-faced, jittery bundle of nerves his brother's embodying at this moment. He can't help but feel resentful towards Dean: what right does Dean have to freak out over some backwoods cabin when Sam can look fire straight in the face without flinching? Dean lost a leg; Sam lost _Jess._

He remembers suddenly, in sharp clarity, a moment when he was about twelve, and a sixteen year-old Dean stumbled in, completely wasted, to the room they were sharing at the time; in Michigan, he thinks. Looking back now, Sam can recognize that he was a pretty manipulative little kid, but Dean never talked about anything when he was sober and so Sam had learned from a young age that the best way to get something real out of his brother was to wait till he'd been drinking.

So he'd started asking Dean questions, about hunting, about girls, about alcohol, things his brother would never tell him otherwise. And he'd asked, "Do you ever get sad about mom?"

And Dean had answered, "Only when I think about not thinking about her."

Sam hadn't really understood at the time, had figured it was just drunk ramblings. But he gets it now. Thinking about Jess still hurts – he imagines that it always will – but what hurts most, what feels like someone's stabbing him in the heart, are the moments when he realizes that he hasn't been thinking about her, that he's gone hours without thinking about her. Moments when he realizes that, yeah, life does go on. Moments like this: watching Claire light the stove and shrug off her bulky sweater, noticing himself noticing the easy way she moves her body, the way her long hair hangs almost to her slim waist. White shoulders, freckles.

He tears his gaze away, clears his throat. "I think I should go check on him," he says. "See he's all right."

"Okay," Claire says, not looking at him, intent on the pan she's got sizzling in front of her.

Sam hoists himself to his feet with a little groan, tries his best to keep his breathing shallow enough not to hurt his ribs and deep enough so he doesn't get dizzy. God, perfect timing. Right in the middle of a case.

Dean is sitting on the stoop, tucked under the awning of the porch so he's mostly out of the rain, though his bed leg is stretched out a little more than the other and the bottom half of his pant leg is on its way to soaked. There's a freshly crushed butt next to him, a cigarette half-gone between his lips. Also an open flask of whiskey.

He glances up quickly when Sam opens the door, scattering ash down the front of his tie.

"Hey," Sam says.

"Hey," Dean replies, looks away, twists the cap back on the whiskey and slips it into his pocket.

"Your foot's getting wet," Sam points out, settling himself next to Dean, one arm wrapped around his ribcage.

"Yeah," Dean says. "I'm gonna change out of this suit anyway, once I get inside." He takes a drag off his cigarette and lets the smoke sift out through his teeth in a strange hiss, brushes absently at the ash on his tie.

"Dude," Sam says. "Are you okay?"

Dean takes another drag, and Sam thinks for a second he's not going to answer, but then he says, "I just don't get it."

"I know, you—"

"No, seriously man, I don't get it. It's like," Dean rubs at his throat, "I feel like I'm having a heart attack. This has never happened to me before."

Sam cocks an eyebrow. "Yes, it has."

"What? No, it hasn't!"

"You seriously don't remember? The year we lived in Topeka for a couple months?"

Dean looks uncomfortable but says, "What are you talking about? You were nine."

"Yeah, and you were thirteen. And you had to see a counselor at school; I remember, dude."

"That?" Dean flaps his hand. "That was for anger management or something, cause I beat up that snot-nosed jerkoff Billy Rangold. God, that kid was such an asshole."

"You were having panic attacks," Sam says. "I watched you breathe into a brown paper bag. Dad said it was atmospheric pressure, remember?"

"So that's what you think this is?" Dean asks eagerly. "Atmospheric pressure?"

"_No, _dude, I think this is you dealing with what happened back in South Dakota. A few months too late, yeah, but—"

"Sam," Dean interrupts. "What do you think I've been doing since South Dakota? _Dealing with it._"

"No," Sam says, "you're dealing with your life now, after the accident. But you've never dealt with the accident itself. You've never even mentioned it, man, besides that first time I saw you. Have you ever talked about it, with anyone?"

"Yeah," Dean says. "'Course."

"Who? Bobby? Yeah right, dude."

Dean is silent, stubs his cigarette out on the stoop beside him, reaches for his crutches to get himself to his feet.

Sam's quicker.

Dean stares at him. "You're kidding me, right? Didn't we agree that you wouldn't take advantage of the fact that I _can't walk?_"

Sam clutches Dean's crutches to his chest. "Dean, if you can't get over this, our whole case is fucked. Are you really going to make me go in there alone again, after what happened?"

"Let's just burn the whole damn thing down. That should take care of it."

"Dean! You heard Claire. It's been her dream to open an artist's colony, and now that she finally has the place, you're saying we should just burn it down?

Dean sighs. "I guess not."

"So _talk _to me. How else do you think you're gonna snap out of it?"

"I was thinking lots of alcohol."

"Funny," Sam says, even though it isn't, because Dean's not kidding.

"All right," Dean says. "We'll talk. After I go inside and put on some clean, dry clothes. After we eat. After we do a little research."

Sam eyes him skeptically.

"Cross my heart and hope to die," Dean says. "Can I have my fucking crutches now, please?"

Reluctantly, Sam gives them back.

"Help me up?" Dean asks, and Sam wonders when he started feeling like Dean was doing him a favor when he asks for help. He realizes suddenly that Dean pulls the same trick every time: _Help me up, Sammy; Give me a hand up these stairs; Hand me my meds; Let me sit down for a second. _It's manipulative, that's what it is, making Sam feel like he's doing something, like Dean's opening up, when really he's just shutting himself up tighter.

"Help yourself up," Sam snaps, and Dean looks stunned for a moment, then crushes his empty beer can and climbs to his feet with no trouble.

Yeah, Sam thinks, I'm onto you.

Inside, Dean sniffs the air, says "Woah. What is that?"

"Curried noodles," Claire says, whirling around, a big wooden spoon in hand. "With sauteed seitan."

"Satan?"

"Seitan. It's ground up wheat-gluten," Sam explains, wondering how he knows. "Like, fake meat."

"Huh," Dean says. "I never knew I knew so little about food."

"It should be ready soon," Claire says, cracking a beer for herself and then two for Sam and Dean.

"Thanks," Dean says, and Sam does a mental tally of how much his brother's had to drink so far. If he keeps it up, maybe they really _will _have a chance to talk.

"I'm going to change out of this suit," Dean says, and Sam thinks that's probably a good idea, because not only is it wet but it has dried mud clinging to it from Dean's time laying passed-out on the ground. "Where's the bathroom?" Dean asks.

"Upstairs, to the right," Claire says, points her wooden spoon, dripping yellow curry onto her floor without seeming to care.

Dean goes through the dining room and into the living room, pauses at the foot of the stairs. His leg aches, despite the vicodin, and though his bladder urges him onward, he just doesn't feel like hauling his sorry ass painstakingly up the stairs right now. Plus, he can always just piss outside.

He sits down on a paisley armchair in order to wriggle out of his jeans, wincing a little. He's not wearing the brace, figured he doesn't need it with the crutches since he barely puts any weight on his leg, but without it the leg looks pale and unfamiliar. Despite the exercises he does as regularly as he can, he has lost muscle, and it's skinnier than its partner, embarrassing.

He stands to rifle through his duffle, leaning on the arm of the sofa, when suddenly Claire bursts into the room.

"Oh!" she says, surprised to find him standing there in his boxers and button-up.

"Uh," he says, can feel a flush creep over his face. Used to be, he wouldn't have minded a pretty girl catching him in his underwear, but besides nurses, he hasn't been undressed in front of a woman for eight months. Which, by the way, is the longest he's gone without sex since he lost his virginity at sixteen.

"Not a gunshot wound," she says, and he doesn't know what she's talking about till he follows her gaze down to his leg, to the scars winding up it.

"Oh," he says, self-conscious, wishing she would learn some manners and get the fuck out. "No."

"That looks like it _hurt,_" she says. "What _happened?_"

"Trampled by elephants," Dean says shortly, lowers himself back into the chair to put his jeans on. "Uh, do you mind…?"

"Oh, yeah!" she says, backing out. "Sorry!"

Dean shakes his head, zips up his jeans. This, this is why he hasn't gotten laid in almost a year. Jesus, he's still blushing, hands shaking.

Get _over _it, Dean tells himself. Get over _all of it. _ Maybe Sam was right, maybe the hospital was right. Maybe he does need therapy.

"We _strongly _recommend that you continue counseling," his doctor had told him. "An injury like this doesn't just impact your physical health, but your mental health, as well. And Diane tells me that you don't speak up in the group; she says you could benefit from a one-on-one. I have some recommendations here…"

Dean had just torn them up, embarrassed to have even had that conversation. It had been a few days before he'd called Bobby, when he was still trying to figure out what the hell he was going to do. He had planned to just climb in the Impala and drive to the nearest motel, but when he'd tried, just as an experiment, to walk to the garage where she was being kept, he'd realized that there was no way he'd be able to go straight from the hospital to being on the road by himself. At that point he hadn't even been able to climb two stairs without stopping to rest; forget driving.

He had thought about calling Sam. Thought about it a lot, the four months he was in the hospital. Imagined a million scenarios in his head, none of which he could imagine actually coming true. But here he is, with his brother, working a case. It doesn't seem real, sometimes. He's still kind of waiting for everything to fall apart – even more than it already has, anyway.

He puts on a t-shirt and an old wool sweater of his dad's that's way too dorky to ever wear in public, but that he loves, and takes a couple slugs of whiskey before making his way back into the kitchen.

He's beginning to feel the alcohol, and is able to grin at Claire when he comes in.

"Sorry about that," he says.

"No, it's okay, it was me," Claire hastens, as Sam hides his smile by taking a sip of beer.

Dean settles himself into a chair, tries to ignore the fact that Claire is watching him more carefully now.

"So, is that, like, permanent?" she asks, waving her wooden spoon at his crutches. The girl had no tact when it comes to asking questions, that much is clear.

"Yup," Dean says, wishing to god that she would look away.

"Wow," Claire says. "I'm so sorry. That really sucks."

She says it sincerely, and Dean can't be angry with her, though he wants to be.

"Yeah," he says, then, "Thanks," which is a weird thing to say, but then, Claire is fucking weird.

"Do you not like to talk about it?" she asks, cocking her head to one side. "Cause I have a friend who got his hand amputated, and he _loves _to talk about it. But then I had this other friend who had some weird disease so she needed a wheelchair, and she _hated _to talk about it. Which do you prefer?"

"I guess I'd rather not talk about it," Dean says, studiously avoiding Sam's gaze.

"That's a shame," Claire says, filling a bowl with curry and handing it to Dean along with a pair of red chopsticks. "Because people love to hear about things like that. We're natural voyeurs."

"I've noticed," Dean says drily.

"It must be hard, ghost-hunting when you can't walk."

"Ng," Dean grunts, because didn't he _just _say that he doesn't want to talk about it?

"Did you start ghost-hunting before or after you hurt your leg?"

"Way before," Dean says, takes a tentative bite of the curry. "Hey," he says. "This is great."

"Thanks," Claire says, putting a bowl in front of Sam and sitting down with them at the table. "Did you get hurt ghost-hunting?"

"Where do you keep your glasses?" Dean asks, pushing himself upright. "I could use a glass of water."

"Top shelf, left side," Claire says, finally distracted.

"This _is _really good," Sam says, mouth full. "Like, really good. You should give me the recipe. Or – give Dean the recipe. He's the cook in the family."

"Oh yeah?" Claire asks, as Dean fills a glass at the sink.

"You guys want some water?"

"I'll take some," Sam says as Claire shakes her head.

The great thing about these crutches, Dean's realized, is that he can let them dangle from his wrists if he needs his hands. So he can carry stuff while he's walking, if he leans on just one, like it's a cane.

"Thanks," Sam says, sips his water while Dean sits, adjusts himself a little in the chair so there's less weight on his bad hip.

"So does it hurt when you're sitting down, or only if you're walking?" Claire asks around a mouthful of seitan.

"Claire," Dean says, not sure how to tell her _stop _without sounding like a complete asshole.

"Right, right," she says. "You don't want to talk about it."

"Right," Dean says, and Sam sends him a meaningful look. Dean's just about to really hate his little brother when Sam asks, "So, Claire, what did you study in college?" and they get into a long discussion about majors and minors and classes that Dean can blissfully tune out, enjoy his vagin—that's not the word—veggian?—veggi-rific?—whatever curry. Work his way through his fourth beer.

"So," Claire asks eventually, licking the last of her curry from her bowl with one slender finger. "I know you do vicodin 'cause you need it, but do you ever do, like… other things?"

Dean and Sam raise their eyebrows and look at each other, then back at Claire.

"Such as?" Sam asks.

Claire flushes. "Oh, I don't know. Like. Natural stuff. Uh…"

"Are you asking if we smoke weed?" Sam asks, and Dean doesn't know which is funnier, Sam saying the word "weed" or Claire's uncomfortable wince.

"Pretty much, yeah," she admits.

"I know I do," Sam says, and Dean's eyebrows shoot up even higher.

"You _do?_"

"College, dude," Sam says with a little smile.

"Awesome," Claire says, gathering the dishes and dumping them in the sink along with the crusty pot and pan. "Dean, you can wash these while I roll a joint."

"What?" Dean protests. "Come on. My leg, you know, I really can't stand for that long."

"Oh, now you wanna talk about it?" Claire says with a grin. "Start cleaning."

Wrist-deep in soapy water, leaning up against the sink to keep his balance, Dean tries to remember the last time he smoked pot. It was at least two years ago – he was a moderate-to-heavy smoker during a large part of his high school years, but ended up stopping because it made… him… paranoid…

Shit. He really shouldn't smoke right now. Not in the state he's in.

But he can't turn it down, not in front of Sam and Claire. That would be such a pussy move, and he's already _fainted _in front of them, he's not in a big hurry to look like any bigger of a wimp. Besides, he's never smoked with Sam. Sam was pretty adamant about a no-drugs policy in high school – he got a free ride to _Stanford, _for Chrissake…

He catches the familiar whiff of sweetish smoke, and turns to see Claire sparking the joint, which, yikes, is _huge…_

Yikes? Dean thinks to himself. What are you, eleven? Man up, Winchester!

"You done with those dishes?" Claire calls. "Take a break and come over here."

"Just a second," Dean says. "Almost done."

It's no good postponing it, though. He's going to have to smoke this joint.

Peer pressure is a _bitch._


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: warnings for gratuitous stoned!boys and a wheelbarrow full 'o angst.

It's been two years since Dean's smoked pot, and after just one hit of the joint he feels his eyelids begin to droop, shoulders relax. Two and he's cracking up over Claire's salt-and-pepper shakers (a pair of ceramic cows embracing); three and he's holding the salt-cow up to his eyes to see how the hell that amazing little detailed gold bell around its neck was done.

"My mother made those," Claire says lazily, leaning a cheek on her hand as she lets out a slow plume of smoke. "She was a ceramicist."

"Cool," Dean breathes, turns the cow over in his hands to admire its tail, which is, holy shit, also a handle. Who _thought _of that?

"I took this pottery class once," Sam says, "and I knew that there was an air bubble in my vase, and I thought, well, whatever, I'm too lazy to do anything about it, and then the kiln exploded. People were _so pissed._" He sighs. "I spent forever on that vase."

"Only to have it all blow up in your face," Claire says, and she and Dean laugh while Sam looks glum.

"You should have seen it," he says. "With this long neck. I was going to glaze it Fireburst Blue, I remember. _Man. _Fireburst Blue was _awesome. _It had, like, red sparkles in it."

"Sam got an A+ in Home Ec his senior year," Dean announces. "He won a contest for this chocolate cake he made, chocolate galosh cake…"

"Chocolate _ganache _cake_,_" Sam corrects between splutters of laughter, and Dean can feel his mouth watering at the memory.

"You're such a girl," he says to makes his point, but he's distracted, remembering the smooth texture, the sprinkle of confectioner's sugar on top, a hint of caramel…

"He's not a _girl _just because he aced Home Ec," Claire says indignantly, rocking back in her chair. "God. Domestic stereotype much?"

"Yeah, don't even try it," Sam says. "We both know who wears the pink frilly apron in our family."

"Dad," Dean deadpans, and they both crack up at the image, Sam wincing and wheezing a little, trying not to hurt his ribs. "Kiss the cook," Dean gasps, and Sam says, "Stop, god, ouch, oh," in short pants of laughter.

Claire passes Dean the joint, and he takes a hit, leans back in his chair, and _oh fuck, _because _there _it is, the tremble of anxiety in his stomach that he remembers from way back when. The over-awareness that embodies everything he hates about marijuana; awareness of how he's holding his body, where he's putting his hands, the words coming out of his mouth. He takes another hit, trying, with some twisted logic, to maybe remedy the situation, but it doesn't help any. A cigarette. A cigarette would help.

Sam takes the joint from him, says, "Merci, mon frere," and Dean looks at him nervously.

"What? What does that mean?"

"It means, thank you brother," Claire translates, casts an appreciative eye over Sam. "You speak French?"

"Un peu," Sam says, "oui oui. Je ne v—veux—vais—dammit—J'aime manger les pommes de terre…"

"Potatoes," Claire translates for Dean, though it's clear she's missing something, because Sam definitely said more than _potatoes_.

"Oui," Sam affirms, nodding, "Oui."

"Oui," Dean echoes, just to feel the foreign language roll off his tongue. "Oui…" Oui. Weeeeeeeeee! Wow. French is _really_ pretty_. _

Sam leans back in his chair and starts to stretch his arms over his head, but winces and curls in on himself when his ribs halt the movement.

"Ow," he breathes, turns it into a long, drawn out hum "Owwww ow ow …." that Claire takes up immediately, and then they're both sitting at the table going "Ow wow wow wow ow" like it's some sort of chant.

They sound kind of good, actually, even harmonizing a little, and Dean finds his head bobbing along with the rhythm, hand drumming on the table.

He rolls his head around on his neck, listens to the snap-crackle-pop of vertebrae and tense muscles, can feel the strain in his back and arms from hauling himself around on his crutches all day. He shrugs his shoulders a little to loosen them, flexes his fingers, suddenly wants to just stretch out as far as he can, like a cat, just lie down on the ground and have someone grab hold of him and streeetcchhh him like a taffy pull.

He glances up, catches Claire giving him a speculative look, still "ow wowing" with Sam. He drops his shoulders, sits up a little straighter, feels himself growing tense under her scrutiny.

He needs a smoke, desperately, but can't bring himself to get up, to fumble around with his crutches, to lean on the table and make those little grunting noises he catches himself making sometimes when he's trying to get to his feet. But fuck, he really…

And suddenly, out of nowhere, he's extremely self-conscious about how much he smokes, about the nicotine stains on his fingers, the scent of tobacco that clings to him, the way his hands shake a little sometimes when it's been too long between one cigarette and the next. Like right now. Fuckin' pathetic.

That's it, he thinks fiercely, rolling trembling fingers into his fists, I'm quitting, but feels a little jolt of panic at the prospect and has to put one hand in his pocket to make sure his cigarettes are still there.

"Right, Dean?" Sam's voice breaks into his inner monologue and Dean's head snaps up towards his brother.

"Huh?"

"I said, you used to make taco lasagna and it was fuckin' unbelievable."

"Right," Dean says absently, runs a palm along the tabletop, eyes his crutches propped innocently in the corner. Cigarette. Cigarette. Cigarettecigarettecigarettecigarette. He thinks about those old zombie movies, imagines himself with his arms stretched out in front, eyes rolled back in his head, moaning "Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicoteeeeeeeeeeeen… niiiiiiiiiiiicoteeeeeeeeeeen…" Ha. That's pretty funny. Ha. Ha!

"What are you laughing at?" Sam asks curiously.

Was he laughing out loud? Shit. "Nothin'."

He has the horrible urge to say something like, "Dude, I am so high right now," but he always hated that kid in high school, the one who kept up a running commentary on his various stages of intoxication. Dean Winchester is _not _that kid.

Claire's cellphone rings suddenly, and Sam and Dean both jump about a mile high.

"Ah!" Claire screams, a little too loud, yanking the phone out of the pocket of her sweater. "The phone! The phone of doom! Ghost hunters, you are no match for the Bells and Whistles ringtone of hell!"

She flips open the phone, still cackling at her own joke.

"Hello," she says, then, "No fucking way!" She puts her hand over the mouthpiece, says, "I've _got _to take this," and darts out of the room.

Dean takes advantage of her sudden absence to push himself to his feet, and he's glad he waited, because there it is: _grunt. _

"Where are you going?" Sam asks, then says, "Wait, wait, don't tell me. Let me guess… it's white and smoky… starts with a 'c' and ends with an 'r'…"

"Ends with an 'e,' dumbass," Dean says, giving his brother a swat across the back of his head.

"What?!" Sam says, starts spelling out loud, "C – a – n – c –"

"Cute," Dean says. "Hand me my crutches, huh?"

He's trying not to feel self-conscious, because this is _Sam_, but still he can't meet his brother's eye as he pushes himself off the table he'd been leaning against and settles himself on his crutches. He wishes he'd brought his cane in from the Impala. He feels more like himself with it, which is, okay, a little depressing, but still.

"I'll come out with you," Sam says, grabbing his coat and bouncing to his feet. Dean tries not to hate him a little for how easy he makes it look.

They sit side-by-side on the stoop and Dean shakes a cigarette out of his pack, sparks his zippo and takes a slow drag. It's stopped raining, but the air is still damp, and the smoke lingers like a cloud before disappearing.

"It's really pretty out here," Sam says, leaning back against the top step. "Cold. But pretty." He waves his hand to encompass the thick, bare trees, branches black with rain, the darkening, charcoal-grey sky.

"Yeah," Dean says, blows a smoke ring and watches it drift, break apart. He feels quiet, calmer, the smoke and the trees and his brother helping to ease the knot of anxiety sitting in his chest and stomach. The sky feels huge, heavy, generous.

"You doin' okay?" Sam asks, knocking his big knee gently into Dean's bad one.

"Yeah," Dean says, takes a drag, glances at Sam sideways through the smoke. "You?"

"Ribs hurt. Stoned."

Dean snorts. "Yeah."

"Dean," Sam says, and Dean groans at his tone.

"What, Sam."

"Will you just… will you just please talk to me now? Tell me about how you got hurt? I think maybe if you just lay it out for me, it'll help some."

Sam's never gonna let this go, and Dean doesn't want to fight anymore, so he sighs, shakes his head. "I really don't remember much, Sam. Swear to god. I remember I'd just picked up my gun, and all of a sudden—" he shrugs. "Boom. Falling. Everything hurt for like, five seconds, and then I blacked out."

See? He's doing fine. He's over this. He feels nervous, yeah, but that's mostly the marijuana. Heart's beating steady, breath is coming even.

"Do you remember how you got out of the house?"

"No."

"What's the next thing you remember?"

"Sam, why are we doing this? Look, dude, I'm fine."

"You do seem better," Sam admits. "I thought you'd be, you know, unconscious by now."

"Hey, hey," Dean warns. "We are never talking about that unconscious thing ever again, you hear me?"

Sam laughs, but goes serious again, that concentrated focus of his own goddamn stubbornness compounded by the pot he's smoked. "So what's the next thing you remember? After falling?"

"Dude…"

"Just tell me! Jesus christ. Why is this so difficult for you?"

"Difficult? It's not difficult, it's just boring."

"Not to me."

"Fine," Dean says, grinds his cigarette out on the stoop and goes for another one, takes his time getting it lit. "Next thing I remember? Ambulance, I guess."

This he does remember, the flashing lights, the strange, anxious faces peering down at him through a haze, someone pressing down on him.

_Stay with us, kid. What's your name? Can you tell us your name? Shit, hold him down, hold him down! You gotta stay calm, kid, okay? You gotta stop moving around, you're just gonna hurt yourself. Your dad says your name is Dean, that right? Just calm down, Dean. Start the drip, now. Quick._

"Was dad there?" Sam asks.

"I think he might have been," Dean says.

_You'll be okay, Dean. You're gonna be okay, buddy. Jesus, Dean, fuck. You're gonna be okay._

"And then?" Sam prompts. "Do you remember the hospital, right after?"

"No," Dean says, which is mostly true. God, they pumped him so full of drugs, those first weeks. He remembers is the feeling of swimming up through a murky, clogged lake, trying to press open his eyes, the weight of morphine and god knows what else, and on the edge of everything, the pain, dull and steady and always there. Doctors, strange hands prodding him, holding him down, not knowing where the hell he was, not seeing anyone he knew, not knowing if his dad was all right or—

"Fuck!" Sam says, and his hand is on Dean's back. "Dean, breathe. _Breathe in._"

Dean does, sucks in a lungful of air, tries to focus on the tangible: on Sam's hand rubbing smooth circles on his back, on the sharp ache of his leg, on the taste of curry and whiskey and tobacco in his mouth. Ew.

His breathing evens out but his heart's still going a mile a minute, strange energy buzzing through his body.

"Get off," he mutters halfheartedly, shrugging out from under his brother's heavy hand, although it's calming him down more than he'll ever admit.

They sit for a moment, just breathing, until Dean glances down, realizes he's dropped his cigarette, and gropes for the pack in his jacket pocket.

"Dude," Sam says, batting it out of his hand. "How bout you breathe oxygen for a second, first?"

Point.

"All right," Sam says slowly. "The hospital."

"Fuck," Dean says.

"Right. You obviously remember something. Just tell me about it. Slow."

"Dude," Dean says, gives a strained grin. "I… I don't know if you're qualified to do this."

Sam looks at him for a moment, then throws his head back and laughs, loud. The sound echoes through the dark, cuts through the cold, rainy air.

"I took a couple semesters of psych," Sam says finally. "Does that count?"

Dean takes a shaky breath. "No. Can I smoke now?"

"Are you breathing?"

"Think so."

"Okay. Do you – do you remember dad being at the hospital?"

"No," Dean says, terse, adamant. He lights his cigarette, closes his eyes.

"What _do_ you remember?"

"I was on a lot of drugs, Sam," Dean says. "I didn't have any fucking idea what was going on." He feels his breath begin to come fast again, and he purposefully slows it down, tries to let the rhythm of smoking regulate his breathing. Cigarette up, inhale, cigarette down, exhale. Fresh air in, fresh air out. Repeat.

Sam's watching him carefully, notices the hitch in his breath. His hand is immediately at Dean's back, hovering just over it this time, like a threat. _If I have to rub your back again, so help me god I'll do it…_

"Did the doctors explain what was happening?"

"I don't know, man, I told you. I knew I was in a hospital but I didn't know what was wrong with me, or where the fuck dad was, I thought maybe he –" Dean breaks off, shakes his head, because his vision's pinholing dangerously and his lungs are getting tight again.

"Okay," Sam says, his voice soft. "Okay." He's got a look in his eyes that makes Dean uncomfortable: it's sad, and worried, and something else that Dean can't quite put his finger on. Guilty? But Sam hasn't done anything – except, okay, provoke him to the edge of another goddamn panic attack.

Dean coughs, trying to dispel some of the tightness in his chest, pulls smoke into his lungs.

"So that's that," Dean says.

"I don't—"

"That's that," Dean says, a tone of finality. He wishes he'd never started thinking about this, wishes they'd never come to the stupid fucking cabin, because now he's caught in this loop of remembering, against his will. The needles in his arms, his leg hanging from the ceiling in traction, metal sticking out of him everywhere. He remembers that he kept asking where his dad was, which, jesus, he really wishes he could forget, because for chrissake he's 26 years old. He remembers that the nurses asked him _who's Sam?_, said he'd been calling for him. Add that to the list of things Sam's never gonna find out, right up there with the time Dean wore lace underwear for a week to settle a bet. Ha. He settled that bet, all right.

"Okay," Sam says, shivers. "I'm cold, man. Let's go inside."

"You go," Dean says. "I'm gonna finish this." He shows Sam his cigarette, two-thirds gone.

Sam starts to hesitate, but changes his mind. "Okay," he says, stands. He looks down at his brother for a second, at the cigarette clenched tightly between his thumb and forefinger, the tension in his shoulders, the way he's got his bad leg propped up out in front of him. He can't help himself, reaches down, lets his palm skim lightly over his brother's hair before snatching his hand back and going inside.

Claire's still on the phone; he can hear the rise and fall of her voice through the closed door of the living room. He wonders, absently, what's got her so worked up: someone must be cutting trees down somewhere, or something.

He helps himself to another beer, trying to dispel the heavy feeling that's settled over his heart. He stands at the stove and spoons some of the leftover curry into his mouth, one eye on the door; he doesn't want Claire busting in to find him dribbling sauce all over her stove. God, it's even better the second time around. Although he's not sure about that seitan stuff; the texture is weird. He leaves that alone, skims around it.

He wipes his hands on his jeans, goes to the kitchen table and boots up his laptop, glances through the window to check on Dean. Still there, huddled in himself a little against the cold.

Jesus. For the first time, Sam imagines what it would be like, to wake up drugged, in pain, alone, feels his fist clench when he thinks about how hard he'd like to hit his father right now. He would, too. He would haul off and sock him, wouldn't hold back, straight across the jaw, maybe break his nose. How the fuck could he have just _left _Dean there, confused, fucked up, body broken beyond repair. He doesn't care what John's excuses are. _For your own safety. I knew you'd want to keep hunting. I had to go after this demon. _What, the guy couldn't have bothered to leave a fucking _note? _

I'm gonna hit him, Sam promises himself savagely. If we ever see him, I'm gonna. I'm gonna hit him.

Claire comes back in the room, looks around. "Where's Dean?"

"Outside."

"Damn," she says, heads over to the curry on the stove and takes up the position Sam's just vacated, spoon going in and out of the pot. "He really smokes a lot, huh? "

"He's stressed," Sam says, not sure why he's defending the thing he hates most about Dean.

"Yeah," Claire says, comes to sit at the kitchen table with him. She sits in the chair directly next to him, and Sam's suddenly nervous.

She's pretty. She's definitely pretty. He'd be a robot not to find her attractive; he's relatively sure that even Dean would admit, under duress, that she's a good-looking girl, underneath the wooly sweater and the faux-goddess skirt. And she's giving him this look, this look that he forgot girls give… with the, the eyes, and the leaning forward thing.

"So," he squeaks, clears his throat, willing her to stay away. Because yeah, she's pretty, but _god _he's not ready. Not sure he could stand the touch of a woman's hand: he's only just reached the point where he thinks that maybe _someday _he'll be interested in other girls again, but it took a while to get here. "So," he says, voice deep this time. "Uh, you've told us about your father. What about your mom? The, uh, the ceramicist?"

"She died when I was ten," Claire says. "In childbirth."

"Really?" Sam says. "That's—"

"Old-fashioned? Yeah. My parents didn't believe in hospitals. We lost the baby, too. That's kind of when my dad started drinking."

She's such an open person, seems so flaky, but Sam realizes now how hard her life must have been. Just as hard as theirs. Dead mother, crazy-ass father.

"Wait," Sam says, something dawning on him. "You didn't believe in hospitals. So you had the baby here? At home?"

"Not this house," Claire says. "It was undergoing renovations at the time, something to do with the plumbing, I don't remember. So for about six months we lived down in… the cabin…" her eyes go wide.

"Claire," Sam says. "Do you remember where your mother gave birth?"

"Upstairs," Claire says in a small voice. "Sam, my mother was a good – she was an amazing person. She's not the – she didn't kill these men. And I told you – I _smudged._"

"Smudging doesn't always work," Sam says gently. "And vengeful spirits… they aren't the people you loved. They're... more like imprints. Like, all the anger. None of the goodness."

Claire is silent, bites her lip.

"Claire," Sam says. "I'm sorry if this is difficult for you, but was your mother buried? Or cremated?"

"I don't know," Claire says. "I was little. There was a funeral…"

"And your little… sibling?"

"Brother," Claire says. "I don't know what happened to his… body. My father wouldn't – he wouldn't – he didn't want to put the baby in the ground. That's all I remember."

"Okay," Sam says, an idea forming in his mind, and he types rapidly on his computer, calling up the data he and Dean had gathered that morning before coming to Claire's house.

He squints at the screen. Bingo.

The front door clatters, and Dean comes into the room, bringing the scent of tobacco and cold, wet air with him.

"Hey," Sam says, as his brother settles himself down into a chair with a wince.

"There any more of that curry?" Dean asks, eyeing the pot on the stove.

"Dude," Sam snaps. "Pay attention. I think I know what we need to do."

To be continued…


	6. Chapter 6

"So lemme get this straight," Dean says, draining the last of his beer and running a hand over his mouth. "You think that the… that the baby… was buried under the stairs?"

"Well, look," Sam says earnestly. "All three of the carpenters died on the stairs. And this morning? The EMF went nuts when I got near the stairs, and that was when shit started flying at me. It's the only lead we've got, man. I say we go in tomorrow morning and rip 'em up. See what we find."

Dean glances at Claire, who looks pale and shaken.

"This is fucked up," she says. "Fucked up."

"Yeah," Sam agrees morosely. "I'm really sorry. But parents, you know… they'll do anything for their kids, even in death. We've seen this kind of thing before. Your mother's just trying to protect your little brother's resting place – if we're right."

Claire, nods, but doesn't look too comforted.

Dean's still kind of high, though it's been leveled out by alcohol and hunt talk, and he rubs his eyes, tries to work a little more clarity back into his head.

"All right," he says, more to himself than anyone else, "Okay." His hip has just started killing him out of nowhere, and he's been drinking too much to take any more Vicodin, so he says, thinking that at least he can get a cushion under his ass, "Can we move this party into the living room?"

"Yeah," Claire says, standing. "You guys want cookies? I have cookies."

"Fuck yeah," Dean says, as Sam says, "Yes, please."

She smiles a little before her face gets tight and worried again, and she goes to the cabinets as the boys climb to their feet, takes out a package of vegan ginger snaps.

Those, Dean can't help thinking, are not cookies. Cookies have butter. Butter is the heart and soul of a cookie.

In the living room, he eases himself down onto the couch, Sam beside him, laptop propped on huge knees. Dean shifts around a little, trying to get comfortable.

"Your leg buggin' you?" Sam asks, always observant.

"No," Dean says shortly, trying not to glance at Claire, because god, he hates it when his little brother asks him shit like that in front of other people. He pops a cookie into his mouth, crunches. Yuck. "Your ribs?"

"Sore." Sam types something into the computer, nods to himself. "We gotta double up on the rocksalt tomorrow," he says. "Is the sawed-off loaded?"

"Pretty sure," Dean says. "We'll double-check in the morning."

Neither of them wonder out loud if Dean will be able to make it into the cabin without turning into a hyperventilating ball of jello, but they're both thinking it.

"I'm thinking we could probably use some extra protection," Sam says after a moment. "Cause Claire already smudged, and nothing happened. Plus, the spirit wasn't corporeal, so we're not gonna know when or where it'll come at us."

"Right. But what the hell can we do about that?"

"A simple protection spell'll do something, at least," Sam says, typing rapidly. "A ward, or a charm. Just a little extra."

"Bobby probably knows one of those," Dean says. "Think I should call him?"

"Check the journal first," Sam says.

"Dude," Dean replies. "I know every inch of that thing. Every fucking inch. I read it front to back about a thousand times when Dad first went missing."

Read it in the hospital, is what he means, and Sam glances at him sharply, but only says, "You didn't see anything?"

"Nothing," Dean says. It's a lie. He knows there's a spell just like what Sam's looking for, and he knows exactly where it is (2/3 of the way through the journal, between the Risalka and the Ruguru) but all of a sudden, for no reason whatsoever, he really wants to hear Bobby's gruff voice.

"Call Bobby, then, I guess," Sam says, running a distracted hand through his hair. "I'll keep surfing the net, see what I can find."

Dean hoists himself to his feet, reaches for his crutches. Sam and Claire both watch him get up, and he feels exhausted all of a sudden, just completely sick and tired of being looked at. "I'll be right back," he says, grabs another gross cookie to distract himself from the surge of anger that runs through him.

As soon as Dean leaves, Claire comes over and sits beside Sam on the couch. Sam concentrates hard on the computer screen in front of him.

"Do you really think it's my mom?" she asks in a small voice.

"I don't know," Sam says. "It looks that way, to me. I've been wrong before, though. But… yeah. Looks that way."

Claire nods, knots her hands together. "Do you think… could I see her? Talk to her?"

Sam feels his hearth clench, but he forces himself to say, "No, Claire. She's… it's not really her, remember? Just a residue. And … she's violent."

"She wouldn't hurt me."

"She may, without meaning to. Spirits are tricky." Sam looks up, now, and she looks so lost, so sad, nothing like the loud, defiant girl he's seen all day. He can't help himself, reaches a hand out and settles it on her knee, trying to comfort her.

"Sam," she says seriously, in a completely different tone, and he swallows, removes his hand uncomfortably. She reaches out, puts her hand on his shoulder, thumb brushing against his neck. He suppresses the shiver that runs through him, stares steadfastly at the computer.

"Hey," she says, "look at me," and he looks up, and she's right there, and her lips are on his and she's got her hand on his face and god it's been so long and she tastes like a gingersnap and her hand is in his hair and oh god Jess –

"I can't," Sam gasps, breaking away, "I can't," and he's surprised to find that tears are threatening to well up in his eyes.

"Okay," Claire says, looks hurt.

"No, it's just – I – I just lost my girlfriend, a few months ago, and I – I haven't really gotten over it."

"Bad breakup?" she says sympathetically, starts moving closer. "Cause you know, rebound is really the only way to—"

"She died," Sam blurts out, and Claire stops, looking mortified. "Sorry," Sam adds miserably, not sure if he's talking to Claire or to Jess.

"No, I… god, Sam, I'm sorry, that's—"

"It's okay," Sam says, takes a shaky breath. "It's not that I'm not, you know, attracted to you, I just... I'm not ready."

"Oh Sam," she says, strokes his hair a little. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"I'm not upset," Sam says, but realizes that he's fighting back tears and she can probably tell. Jesus. What a pair he and Dean make; he's a crybaby and Dean's a scaredy-cat.

They sit like that for a moment, Claire still close, her hand resting gently on his head, and he wishes for a moment that he could just give in to what she's offering, lean into her hand and… but he can't. When she put her mouth on his all he could think was how it felt so different from Jess. It wouldn't be fair to either of them, at this point.

"So," Claire says, when he's regulated his breathing again and his hands have unclenched. "Uh, would it be weird if… what about your brother?"

Sam just looks at her for a second. "Are you kidding me?"

"Hey," Claire says defensively, "I've been holed up here for like two weeks all alone. I mean, I can more than take care of myself, if you know what I mean, but it isn't quite the same." She eyes him hesitantly. "If it's weird I won't…"

"I don't mind," Sam says, surprised to find that he really doesn't. If anything, he's maybe just the tiniest little bit pleased that Dean is, for once, a girl's second choice. Okay, maybe a lot bit pleased.

"You think he'd go for it?" She gnaws a thumbnail. Sam kind of can't believe they're having this conversation not three minutes after her tongue was in his mouth.

"Uh, yeah," Sam says.

"Okay," she says. "I might give it a try, then."

"Okay."

"Okay."

Sam clears his throat, goes back to the computer.

"Is this uncomfortable?" Claire asks.

"No, not at all."

"Okay," she says.

Sam eats a cookie.

***

Dean settles himself down on the steps, pulls his coat a little tighter around his body. It's completely dark now, even colder than before, and the chilly cement of the porch step is seeping into his bones, spreading through his already aching hip. The moon is just a concentrated glow behind the thick cover of clouds, and the sky is an eerie, off-black color, like smog. He lights a cigarette before hitting Bobby on speed-dial.

He hasn't talked to Bobby since he left his house those few months back, and he feels guilty for not calling before, even though that's Bobby's way, too; neither of them are big on long-distance relationships. But it's overdue, nevertheless.

He hadn't known who the fuck to call, in the hospital. It had been so long since he'd spoken to anyone he knew; and to be honest, he didn't really know anyone besides his dad, Sam, and Bobby, whom he hadn't spoken to for at least a year or two before he'd called. But still, it was strange to hear a familiar voice, after all those months of rotating doctors and nurses and other patients.

When he'd called Bobby it had been about two weeks since his last surgery, and he'd been up and about for the past four days, hobbling down the hall with the help of the hulking nurse's aide named Stefan, trying to figure out where the hell he was going to go and how he was gonna get there. But he'd caved, picked up the phone, and damn, he was glad he had. Bobby had picked him up the same day he'd called, no questions asked, brought him home and deposited him on the couch, made him a sandwich. Dean's not ever going to forget that.

The phone rings once, twice, three times, and then, "Hello?"

"Hey, Bobby," Dean says, a helpless grin spreading across his face. He can picture Bobby, standing in the dark hallway of his house, baseball cap and furrowed brow, wondering who the hell could be calling him on the house phone.

"Dean?" The delight is evident in his voice. "Jesus, kid, how the hell are you?"

"I'm all right, Bobby, how are you?"

"Still here, so I'm doin' better than some. How's the leg?"

"Good, it's good."

"You still gettin' around with that cane?"

"Mostly, yeah… just got a pair of shiny new crutches, been using those for the past couple'a days."

"Wearin' your brace?"

"Yes, Doctor Singer."

There's a heavy pause and Bobby says, "Heard about Sam's girlfriend."

"Yeah," Dean says, throat tightening for a moment at the unexpected mention of Jess. "How'd you know?"

"Saw it in the papers. You think I haven't been keepin' my eye out for you? Usually I check the obits 'cause I figure if you're likely to do anything of note, it's get your dumb asses killed."

Dean chuckles a little, takes a drag of his cigarette, which is mostly ash at this point.

"But seriously," Bobby says, voice softening. "I'm sorry. Goddamn. That poor kid."

"Yeah," Dean says. "He's still pretty beat up about it."

"I bet. Shit. Woulda called, but I didn't have your number."

"I programmed it into your cellphone, dude, remember?"

"Yeah, but how am I supposed to know how to find it on there?"

"You're never gonna learn how to work that thing properly, are you?" Dean says, stubbing out his cigarette and rummaging around in his pocket for another one, phone tucked between chin and shoulder.

"Probably not," Bobby agrees. Then, "So, what's the occasion? Much as I'd like to flatter myself, I'm sure you didn't call just to say hello."

Actually, that pretty much is why Dean had called, but he says, "Guilty. Although I gotta say, it's good to hear your voice."

"You too, kid." They're silent for a moment, then Bobby says, "Enough sweet talk, it's givin' me a toothache. What can I do for you?"

"Nothin' big," Dean says. "We just – hang on a second." He lights his cigarette with a hiss of the Zippo, takes a drag.

"You're still smoking like a freight train, huh?"

Dean snorts. "Basically, we've got a non-corporeal on our hands and we're looking for a protection spell we could do on the fly, something simple but effective."

"Protection spell?" He hesitates. "So you boys are hunting again."

"Yeah," Dean says. "Tryin' to find Dad, killing every evil son of a bitch we find in between."

"How… how's that workin' out for you?"

"Dad? Or hunting?"

"Both, I guess. Meant hunting, though. Can't be easy, with that leg."

"It's harder," Dean admits, "but not as hard as you'd think."

"Still hurtin' bad?"

"All the goddamn time." Dean finds, to his surprise, that it doesn't make him uncomfortable to talk to Bobby about this. After all, he was there right when Dean got out of the hospital; Bobby's seen him at his worst, and there doesn't seem to be any reason to hide, not from him. "Meds help some. And I haven't fucked it up worse, anyhow. As for Dad… that's pretty much a miserable failure."

"Yeah." There's a pause. "You're taking care of yourself, right? I mean –"

"Yeah, Bobby," Dean says. "And I'm takin' care of Sam, too. We're doing all right. Seriously. No casualties so far."

"Well. Guess I'll have to help you keep it that way. Protection spell, huh? What exactly are we dealing with, here?"

Dean gives him the basics of the case, strategically painting himself into the picture so Bobby won't ask why Sam went into the cabin alone. Oh, cause I fainted. Yeah. Definitely not an integral part of this story.

"I think I got something," Bobby says. "It ought to – not hide you, exactly, but kind of cast a dimmer over your presence, so you'll be harder to hit."

That's the spell in Dad's journal. "Sounds good," Dean says. "Tell me what we have to do."

Bobby talks and Dean listens, finishes his cigarette. He misses Bobby, he realizes, wishes for just a second that he could be back in Bobby's kitchen, listening to the guy tell some ridiculous story or bitch about the price of gas. He's got a way of making everything seem simpler, safer, do-able. Dean could use a little of that good energy right now.

"You got all that down?" Bobby asks after a while.

"Uh huh," Dean says, though he hasn't written a single word.

"All right. Be careful, you hear?"

"We will, man. Thanks."

"You think you'll ever make it up here again? Kind of miss having a maid around to cook for me."

"Yeah," Dean says, and he means it. "Yeah, we'll be heading through in the next month or so, I think. I'll make that macaroni shit you like so much. With the olives."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Thanks again, Bobby. You take care of yourself."

"I will."

Dean's just about to hang up with he hears Bobby say, "Hey, Dean."

"Yeah?"

There's a long pause, and then he hears Bobby pull in a breath. "Talked with John a few days ago."

Dean feels his heart stop, just for a moment, then start up again three times faster than before. "What? You talked to Dad?"

"Yeah."

"Well, christ, Bobby, why the fuck didn't you—"

"Cause he asked me not to, Dean. He called for help with some research. I told him you'd stayed with me for a while, after you got out of the hospital. He didn't know that."

"Jesus." Dean runs a hand through his hair, fumbles in his jacket pocket, tries to get his thoughts together. He pauses, unlit cigarette between his teeth, hands poised with his Zippo. "He say where he was?" he demands around the filter.

"No. He asked if you two were hunting. Told him I didn't know. He didn't seem too pleased with the idea."

"Jesus," Dean says again, ducks his head to light his cigarette, exhales. "What kind of research was it?"

"Crop patterns."

"For what area?"

"Whole goddamn Midwest. From Minnesota to Kentucky."

Nothing he and Sam didn't already know. "How'd he sound?"

Bobby sighs. "Tired. But otherwise okay. He's worried about you two. Doesn't want you hunting."

"Well, fuck him," Dean spits out. All this shit, all at once, the memories from his fall, and the hospital afterward, and now this. He's not feeling too friendly towards his father at the moment. "So he'll talk to you but he won't fucking talk to me? Yeah. Fuck him."

Bobby huffs a laugh. "That's what I said."

"What?"

"We had a little disagreement. I guess… I guess I wasn't too pleased with the way he'd handled himself. With you. Kinda told him so."

"Christ, Bobby," Dean says, pulls on his cigarette and rubs a hand over his eyes. "I don't need you to be my knight-in-shining-flannel, you know."

"I know. He caught me in a bad mood." Bobby sounds glum, and Dean can't help but laugh a little.

"Fuck," he says. "So what'd you tell him?"

"Told him I didn't know if you were hunting or not. Told him I didn't know if you were okay or not. Told him we hadn't spoken since you'd gone off to Stanford."

"Yeah, listen, I'm sorry about that," Dean says, guilt hot in his stomach. "I just—"

"Hey," Bobby says, and Dean can hear the smile in his voice. "I ain't judging. I'm not some high school girl sittin' by the phone waitin' to hear your dulcet voice. I know you, Winchester, and I wasn't expecting it, anyway. So don't worry."

Dean's a little disturbed by the image of Bobby as a high school girl, but he says, "All right."

"He wanted to know how bad the leg was."

Dean breathes smoke, doesn't say anything.

Finally Bobby says, "I told him it was pretty bad."

"Dude," Dean says, pained. "Thanks a fuckin' ton. It's a hell of a lot better than when you last saw me, I can tell you that."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You should see me take the stairs now. Nothin' to it." He thinks briefly back on his ass-scooting incident from earlier, but those stairs were fucking huge and steep. Outliers.

"Well, damn. I'm glad to hear it," Bobby says, and he does sound glad.

"Did you tell him he should fucking call us?"

"Yup."

Dean shakes his head. "What'd he say?"

"Don't know for sure. We were both kinda yelling at that point. Then he hung up. That's pretty much where my knowledge ends. Just… just thought I should tell you."

"Well. Thanks."

"Yeah."

"I should go," Dean says, "Get started on this spell. But we'll come see you sooner or later. Sooner."

"Good," Bobby says. "And just so you know, my house is now a smoke-free zone. Still stinks of tobacco every time it rains, thanks to your chain-smoking in every room downstairs for two goddamn weeks."

"Don't worry about that," Dean says, takes an exaggerated drag of his cigarette that he knows Bobby will be able to hear. "I quit."

"Go do your spell," Bobby says. "Tell Sam I said hey."

"Yeah, I will. And thanks for letting me know. About my dad."

"I hope you find him. And I hope you're a little easier on him than I was."

"Fat chance of that," Dean says, though he knows that no one's easier on John than he is. The knowledge hurts, a little.

"Take care."

Dean sits for a moment after they've hung up, stares at the phone in his hand, goes to take a drag of his cigarette and realizes that he's smoking the filter. He crushes the butt slowly against the cement step, is this close to smoking another one but it's cold and dark and Sam's probably wondering what the hell is taking him so long.

He grits his teeth, reaches for the porch railing and starts to pull himself up, stops when he realizes, with a gasp of pain, that his goddamn knee has locked up in the cold and won't unbend.

He spits a curse, lowers himself back down, tries to massage the knee into motion, but he's too rough, too angry about his father, and he just ends up hurting himself more.

"Fuck!" he shouts, and the door bangs open behind him almost immediately.

"What's wrong?" Sam asks, coming down the stairs to stand in front of him. "You've been out here for like twenty minutes, dude."

"My fucking knee," Dean bites out between clenched teeth, trying in vain to unbend it more than half an inch. "Bobby talked to Dad and my fucking knee is fucking locked."

"Your knee is—woah, what? Dad? Huh?"

"Dad called Bobby and – fuck – " Dean grips his knee, closes his eyes against the wave of pain that washes over him.

"Okay," Sam says, crouching down in front of Dean, "Okay, dude, first things first. Just relax, okay?" He cradles Dean's knee cap in one huge palm, puts his other hand on the back of his brothers calf. "Dean, relax."

Dean takes a huge, noisy breath, lets it out slow, drops his shoulders from where they were hovered around his ears.

Sam curls his fingers around the kneecap, slowly starts unbending the knee, centimeter by centimeter, adjusting his grip every so often. Dean closes his eyes, tightens his jaw; it hurts but it's working. He can feel it creak open, like a rusty door.

"That's good," Dean says at last, as Sam attempts to bend it that last unbendable inch. "Not gonna go any further than that." He tests it out, moves it around a bit, wincing. "Thanks, man."

Sam pulls him to his feet, steadies him with one hand on his back as he adjusts his grip on his crutches.

"Okay," Sam says, once Dean's balanced and moving towards the door. "What's this about Dad?"


	7. Chapter 7

Sam's silent for a moment after Dean fills him in on his conversation with Bobby, and then he says, "At least we know Dad's all right. Jesus, what an asshole."

"He's not an asshole," Dean says automatically. "He just – sucks sometimes."

"That's putting it mildly."

They're in the kitchen while Claire makes up the fold-out bed for Dean, who's propped up against the countertop, afraid to sit down lest his knee lock again. Sam's sitting at the kitchen table holding an icepack to his ribs and eating a bowl of granola, studying the notes Dean gave him on the protection spell.

"Hey Sam," Dean says suddenly. "You think it'd be different, if I wasn't…" he waves his hand vaguely at his bad leg. "You think he'd still be hiding like this?"

Sam's silent for a moment. "I don't know, man. But honestly? Yeah. I think he would. The thing that killed mom – that's always kinda been his fight. And, like I said, the guy's an asshole, but he's always tried to protect us, in his own fucked-up way. I just… I don't think he'd want us getting into this."

"Yeah." Dean sighs, settles a hand on his aching right hip, kneads a little. "We got any more of those heat-packs?"

"I think there's one or two in the first-aid kit," Sam says, then, "I really wish there were something I could do."

"Nothin' we can do but just keep looking, Sam," Dean says. "He can't run forever."

"I didn't mean – well, that too," Sam says, looks a little embarrassed. "I just mean – your leg, dude. Maybe we should see a doctor, get you on some different painkillers. Percocet or something? Vicodin doesn't seem like it does shit, these days."

"It does," Dean says, "believe me, it does. My tolerance is growing, that's all. Wears off quicker, comes on weaker. But usually I'm fine, Sam; it's just the cold's kind of getting to me. Don't worry."

Sam shrugs, looks down at the tabletop. He can't help but worry. It's rough, watching his brother in pain day in and day out; and he does watch. He sees how Dean's face falls into a grimace when he thinks Sam's not looking, sees the furrow between his brows, sees how Dean wakes up in the morning with his face pale and rigid, sometimes can't even really hold a decent conversation until the painkillers have kicked in, and even then Sam suspects that they just barely take the edge off.

"Hey," Dean says, snaps his fingers. "Quit it, dude. It's this shit with dad, it's messing with your head. I'm fine. You're just putting your worries where you can see them."

Sam is startled by the profundity of that statement. "Maybe you're right."

" 'Course I'm right." Dean pushes himself up a little, leans on the countertop so he can follow it over to the kitchen table, where he rests his hands on the back of Sam's chair and peers over his brother's head to look at the list of ingredients for the protection spell.

"Pretty easy, right?" he asks.

"Looks simple," Sam agrees. "Should only take about a half hour, tomorrow morning. I feel like we've done this one before, way back. You sure it wasn't in dad's journal?"

"Relatively sure," Dean says. "I coulda missed it, though. Not even I can claim perfection."

Claire comes into the kitchen. "Couch is all ready," she says. "Sam, the guest room already has clean sheets. There's like, toothpaste and soap in the bathroom. Feel free to use the shower, too, I've got a bunch of towels."

"I bled on some earlier," Sam says, lifting a hand to touch the bandage on his forehead. "Sorry about that."

"Sam," Claire says with an exasperated sigh, "I'm a woman. You can't imagine how much stuff I've bled on in my life."

"Huh?" Sam says, and Dean goes, "Oh, _gross_."

"There's nothing gross about the female body," Claire says primly, stealing a bite of Sam's granola.

Dean reflects for a moment. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Sam casts a strange, furtive glance to Claire, and then to Dean, and Dean's not really sure how to interpret it, but it makes him nervous.

"I'm going to go brush my teeth," he announces, and Claire hands him his crutches without being asked.

"Need help finding anything?"

"Uh, is it hard to find the bathroom?"

"No. There's only three rooms up there."

"Then, no."

He gets his toothbrush and pajama pants out of his duffel, slings the pants awkwardly over one shoulder and starts his slow way up the stairs. It's an old house, so they're steeper than he's used to, and it takes a fair amount of concentration to get up; he hasn't quite perfected his technique on crutches. Mid-way through he hears Claire come up behind him, and he steps aside, presses his back to the wall.

"Why don't you go on ahead of me," he says.

"Thanks," she says, gives him a little smile, and as she passes her hand brushes up right against his –

Jesus _christ_. He swallows, tries to focus on getting up the stairs, but he can't help himself from watching Claire instead, going up the stairs in front of him, and he has to bite down hard on his lip to remind himself to attend to the task at hand.

He's been like a thirteen year-old boy lately, and he knows it. A waitress, who was, he'll admit it, probably over forty, had winked at him suggestively just the other day and he'd had to yank Sam's computer over his lap just to hide the evidence, though he's pretty sure Sam had cottoned on because he couldn't stop smirking all through the rest of breakfast.

He moves cautiously down the hall, sees the bathroom almost immediately. Claire's bedroom door is closed and he can hear her moving around inside, so he steps quickly into the bathroom, shuts the door. He's had to pee for the last hour and it feels _great_. The bathroom is nice, with some heady potpurri that smells like roses and lavender, and the toothpaste is some weird all natural licorice stuff that actually tastes pretty great.

As he's brushing his teeth, pajamas on and one hand bracing himself on the sink, he hears a knock.

"Can I come in?" Claire calls.

"Arglh," Dean answers, mouth full of toothpaste, spits. "Yeah, I'm decent."

She's changed into a pair of soft grey pajama pants and a tight, white tank top that leaves pretty much nothing to the imagination in certain departments. Like, the boob department. Like, woah, her nipples are _way_ darker than he would have expected, and she's not as frail as she looks packaged away in the bulky wool sweater she's been wearing all day. She's got _curves_, and he would –

All of a sudden, in a moment of painful clarity, he realizes that he's been staring _directly_ at her breasts, toothbrush still hanging out of his mouth, and she's just standing there looking at him, one eyebrow raised. He yanks his gaze away, turns back towards the sink, and she steps forward like nothing's happened, paints a line of toothpaste on her brush and begins brushing. Dean can feel his face heating up, and he brushes furiously, feeling completely caught.

Pull it together, he tells himself, but pretty much can't wait till Sam and Claire are asleep upstairs and he can jerk off in peace. Fuck decorum. He deserves it.

Claire leans forward, too close, to spit out her toothpaste, her hair brushing his arm, and as Dean leans back to get out of her way he completely overbalances, sways dangerously on his good leg, arms flailing to grab onto something.

Claire's quick, reaches over and grips his arm to hold him upright before he can go down or put too much weight on his bad leg, and for a moment she just keeps one hand wrapped around his bicep and the other on his waist, steadying him.

"Jesus," she says, "sorry about that!" She's smiling like she's not really sorry, a strange gleam in her eye that sends Dean's blood down to exactly the place he doesn't want to think about right now, not with a girl not a foot away from him.

"Thanks," Dean says, and, wow, he really didn't think it was possible feel so mortified and so horny at the same time.

She releases him, and he realizes he's been holding his breath.

Forget thirteen year-old boy, he's acting like a thirteen year-old _girl_. Before his accident, he never would have felt this way, but since he fucked up his leg he's had this bizarre, terrified shyness around women that he's _never, ever_ felt before in his life.

There are two things that he's always known he's good at: women and hunting. And he never doubted either of them, until a couple months ago. He tries not to think about this too much, because, honestly, it scares him a little, but in his more reflective moments he thinks that maybe all that time in the hospital, when he couldn't walk, could barely move, maybe all those efficient nurse's hands running over him, impersonal, cold, ruined something for him. To have so many women touch him, but in the most asexual way possible, like he was a job, something to be dealt with. Sometimes (and why is he thinking about this? It's just going to depress him), sometimes when he tries to jerk off, he can't, every fantasy replaced with a blank face and the sterile stench of medicine.

"You okay?" Claire asks, and he realizes that he's been staring into space, moving the toothbrush methodically around his mouth but not really doing anything.

"Oh," he says, "yeah," and spits out the rest of his toothpaste, rinses his mouth. He moves to leave, but Claire says,

"So tomorrow, you guys are going to go in and … vanquish the spirit? Whoever it is?"

"Yeah," he says, leans a shoulder on the doorjamb. "Or, that's the plan."

"You gonna be okay?" she asks. "The cabin, and everything? Your brother told me you… had a bad experience once."

"Oh," Dean says, making a mental note to kill Sam. "I think I'll be all right." But his heart is starting to race just thinking of it, and he wonders how the fuck he's going to pull this off.

"He didn't say what happened," Claire says, "but is that how you hurt your leg?"

"Yeah," Dean says, can feel his jaw tighten, turns away and moves back down the hall, stomach in strange knots that he just doesn't know what to do with. He kind of hates Claire, right now, for making him feel this way, hates her for how nice she looks in her pajamas, how soft her hair felt brushing against his arm, hates how she's almost as tall as he is and how she won't stop asking her fucking questions.

Downstairs, Sam has stretched out on the makeshift bed, an ice pack pressed to his ribs, eyes closed.

Dean gets a couple heat packs from out of the first-aid kit, eases himself down on the bed next to his brother, props himself up against the headboard.

"Shove over, dude," Dean says, cracking one of the packs to activate it and laying it over his knee. Sam doesn't move. "Seriously, Sam," Dean says, pressing the other pack to his hip. "This is my bed, go upstairs if you want to sleep. I'm not going back up there, it took me like ten minutes."

Sam mumbles something and flings an arm out, thwacking Dean in the stomach.

"Hey," Dean says, trying a different tactic. "Go get me a glass of water so I can take my meds. I'm in a lot of pain, here."

Sam cracks an eye, scowls. "You're a manipulative son-of-a-bitch sometimes, you know that?" he grumbles, but he pushes himself up with a groan.

Dean feels a little stab of guilt, says, "Dude, I was kidding, I got it," but Sam just shakes his head, bitchface firmly in place.

"Too late," he says, ambles into the kitchen. There's the sound of a running faucet and he comes back out, hands Dean the water and plops down onto the bed. Dean palms two Vicodin, swallows them down, offers the bottle to Sam, who takes one.

"I did three different drugs tonight," Sam says in the same tone of voice he used to say _I got an A+ on my science exam._

"Dude," Dean says. "You're a loser. Alcohol doesn't count as a drug. Neither does Vicodin."

"Vicodin definitely does," Sam says. "It makes me feel like parts of my brain have gone liquidy."

"That's just the normal state of your brain," Dean says, clamps a hand down on Sam's shaggy head.

"You think you're addicted to painkillers?" Sam asks out of nowhere, getting a wide-eyed, serious look on his face that makes him appear all of five years old. When Sam is sleepy and kind of drunk he regresses about fifteen years.

"Yeah, Sam, probably," Dean says, not sure why he's being honest, except that he's sleepy and has also been drinking.

"Really?"

Dean shrugs. "I've got a pretty steady prescription, so I wouldn't worry about it. Not like I'm gonna be jonesin' for a fix, or whatever."

"I think you have an addictive personality," Sam says thoughtfully, and Dean snorts, even though this addiction talk has made him painfully aware of the lack of nicotine in his blood. Goddammit. He just brushed his teeth.

"Go to bed, Sam."

"It's only like ten o'clock," Sam says with a yawn, glancing at his watch. "I dunno why I'm so tired."

" 'Cause we drove eight hours last night and then slept for an hour before waking up at the ass-crack of dawn?"

"Why didn't _you_ get a scholarship to Stanford?" Sam muses, sliding off the bed, ice pack still pressed to his ribs.

"You're a dick," Dean says good-naturedly.

"You need anything before I head upstairs?"

"I'm good. I'm gonna get up and have a cigarette before I go to sleep, anyway."

"Right." Sam tugs his duffel up over his shoulder. " 'Night, Dean."

" 'Night, Sammy." He watches his brother head up the stairs, feels sad all of a sudden, for no reason at all. Wishes for half a second that Sam was four again and he could tuck him under his arm, just for a minute, give him the kind of hug you can give your four year-old brother but not your twenty-two year-old brother who's got three (okay, three and a half) inches on you.

He pushes himself up out of the bed regretfully, really doesn't feel like going back outside in the cold. He pockets the heat packs to take with him, bites out a curse as the wind hits him when he steps out the door, whistling right through his thin pajama pants.

He lights a cigarette and holds the heat pack to his knee with his free hand, praying that it won't lock up again.

He hears the door open behind him, and he twists his head up to see Claire, bundled back into that wool sweater.

"Hey," he says, surprised.

"Hey," she says, sinks down onto the step beside him. "How's the fold-out? You need more blankets?"

"No, I've got plenty," Dean says, takes a drag. "Thanks."

"When I start my artist colony, every room is going to be a different color, and every bed will have a down comforter. I want those iron beds, the old-fashioned kind."

"That sounds nice," Dean says, and it does. "If I were an artist I'd totally sleep in your bed."

"If you were an artist?" she says with a smirk, and he laughs uncomfortably. No way is she coming onto him. Is she? She's been awfully… touchy. No. He is so not her type. And she's not his.

Ah, who is he kidding. She's an attractive woman. That's his type, right there.

He flicks ash, takes a few quick, long drags. "Sounds kind of expensive, those luxury beds."

"I have a grant," Claire says, smiles a little. "The government gave me an arts grant for… a lot of money."

"Really?" Dean says, impressed. "That's awesome."

"It is pretty awesome." She watches him smoke for a minute, says, "You're really destroying that cigarette, huh."

"It's freezing out here," he says. "Just wanna finish so I can get back inside."

"How much do you smoke in a day?" she asks.

"Too fuckin' much," he says, pulls smoke deep into his lungs and crushes his cigarette out on the steps, looks around and realizes that there are already at least ten butts collected in a scraggly, sad-looking pile, obviously all from him.

"Sorry about that," he says. "Before I leave I'll put those in the trash or something."

"Thanks," she says, digs around in one huge pocket. "Here, take this." She holds out an altoid.

" 'Kay," he says, pops it into his mouth. "Why, exactly?"

"So I can do this," she says, leans forward out of nowhere and plants her mouth firmly on his.

For a second he's too surprised to respond; then, before he can stop himself, he breaks into a wide grin, grins into her kiss for a long minute before he remembers to kiss her back.

_God_ it's been too long, and apparently it's been a while for her, too, because her hands are freaking _everywhere_, snaking up cold under his jacket and shirt, skittering across his chest, dipping into his flannel pajama pants and then his boxers so he's gasping into her mouth as they dance up to grip his hair a moment later.

"_Jesus_, Claire," he says, when she breaks away.

She grins, sticks out her tongue, where the altoid is melting away on it. "Wanna take this inside?"

"Yeah," he breathes, and she stands while he pulls himself to his feet. _Thank god_ his knee acts like it's supposed to and lets him up with no trouble.

In the house she takes his crutches away from him and pushes him down so he's sitting on the sofabed, and he says, suddenly panicked, "Sam, Sam is—"

"In his room for the night," Claire whispers. "I checked. Door's closed. We just have to be quiet. Besides, he doesn't care."

He starts to say something else, like how does she know Sam doesn't care? but she's eased herself between his legs and is kissing him again, slower this time, deeper; not just making out, but a definite prelude to something else. And Dean's terrified.

For the first time, he's not sure if he's going to be able to… live up to standards. Unless every woman he's ever been with was faking it, which he doesn't think is the case (_prays to god_ is not the case), he's always been effective at what he does. Not just effective, let's be honest – he's been really fucking great at what he does. It's a point of pride with him, up there with melting down a perfect bullet or knowing exactly when a werewolf is going to charge. Except, you know, _way funner_.

But now, he knows the old tried-and-trues aren't going to work. Normally he'd be pulling her down right now, flipping her onto her back, kneeling over her and working his way slowly down her body, getting her out of that ridiculous sweater… but he can't, not with his leg. So he's not sure what to do.

Claire sheds her sweater without his prompting, however, says "Come on," unzipping his jacket and then curling her fingers underneath the hem of his t-shirt, tugging it up over his head, tossing it aside.

"Damn," she says, gives a low whistle, traces her hand over a particularly brutal scar that's clawed down his chest.

"Shoulda warned you," he says, easing his hands down her body, gripping her hips, pulling her closer. "Perks of the job."

"You're a lot more _muscley_ than I thought you'd be," she muses, bites down on his collarbone, a light nip that sends a shiver running through his body. "Mmmm… look at these _shoulders_."

Usually that's his kind of line, but right now all he can do is moan a little as she slides a hand appreciatively down his chest and belly, right down to – _oh god_.

"Okay," she says, giving him a gentle squeeze over his pants, "how are we going to do this? With your leg, I mean."

He's almost too dazed to answer, suddenly so hard he can barely see straight, but he says, "I've never – I don't – since I hurt –"

"Oh man! So you're kind of a virgin?" she asks, lighting up, and he barks a laugh at the idea, but in a twisted way, she's right.

"Well," she says, pushing him gently, "why don't you get all the way up on the bed like this…"

He follows her lead willingly, scoots himself back so he's half-reclined against the headboard, and she follows, still between his legs, hands on his chest.

"I guess I'll probably have to be on top," she says. "Fine by me."

"Awesome," Dean manages, then, "hang on," has the presence of mind to prop his knee up on a pillow, just for now.

"I'm going to be careful with you," she murmurs, puts one soft hand on his bad hip as he mouths his way down her neck, "don't worry. Just tell me if I hurt you. Does it hurt if I do _this_?" She palms his cock through the flannel again and he can't help but buck up against her hand a little.

"Christ, no," he gasps, "and I'm not gonna break, don't worry, I – _oh god_."

"I'm just gonna get these out of the way," she says, undoing the drawstring to his soft grey pants with a flourish. She eases them down over his hips, tugs them carefully off his legs and down onto the floor in a heap. "And these," she says, moving onto his boxers, and before Dean knows what's happening he's completely naked and she's still fully clothed.

"Nice," she breathes, taking him in, then runs a hand down the nastiest of his scars, the one that runs jagged from his hip to his knee, the worst of the surgeries.

"Don't," he gasps, tries to take her hand away, but she lowers her head instead, lays a kiss against the scar tissue puckered there, licks a clean line down to his knee.

"I like it," she says against his skin, "war wounds, a warrior. Does it hurt if I do _this_?"

And her mouth is suddenly on his dick and he lets out a strangled gasp, and then, too soon, her face is back up by his, grinning wickedly.

"Claire," he growls, "get this _off_," tugs at her shirt, and she reaches down to pull it over her head, and hello: if that isn't the most miraculous sight Dean's seen in six months, he doesn't know what is.

"Jesus," he says, wishes he had thirty hands, "you're beautiful."

"Thanks," she says, "does it hurt if I do _this_?" She lowers herself down on top of him, straddles his hips and grinds against him a little, and yeah, that definitely does hurt, it also feels fucking incredible.

"Doesn't hurt," he says, "jesus, you should get these," fumbles to undo the drawstring of her pajama pants.

"Yeah," she says, "I was about to. That was just practice for later." She wiggles out of her pants, and Dean almost weeps. A real, live, naked woman.

"God, I'm so glad you showed up here," she says, almost conversationally, except for the hitch in her voice when he reaches down and slips his hand between her legs. "That body, _yes oh _and you're a great kisser even if you do taste kind of like a _yes, yes_ an ashtray and a meat eatee_eooooh,_ I'm so glad my house is haunted, unless it's my mother, does it hurt if I do t_his_?" and her hand is firmly wrapped around his dick and he can't even answer.

He can already tell she's going to talk through this whole thing, and that's just fine, because she's rolled over onto him, is straddling his good leg saying, "God, I really needed to get laid."

"You have no fucking idea," he says as she guides his hand right where she wants it, and lets out a soft moan, "Claire, you have no fucking idea."

"Actually," she says, grins wickedly, "I have some _great fucking _ideas."


	8. Chapter 8

Dean is used to waking up confused: his leg is at its worst in the morning, and he usually has to swim up through a haze of pain before he can identify his surroundings, keeping his eyes closed and breathing steadily, white-knuckling the scratchy sheets of whatever motel bed he's sleeping on and trying to remember what town they're in and what kind of hunt they're on.

This morning, though, the fight to cognizance takes considerably shorter, since his hand, instead of gripping a handful of motel sheets, grabs onto what is unmistakably someone's bare ass. And even his pain-addled mind can tell that there is the body of a naked woman wrapped around his good left side, legs linked over his ankle.

He cracks an eye open and sees that Claire is blinking sleepily, looking bewildered, probably because he just inadvertently squeezed her butt, hard.

"Hey," she says, "it's cold," reaches down and tugs the blanket up and over them both. She curls up closer to him, nestles her face in the crook of his neck and closes her eyes again.

Dean is afraid to move, tucks his chin gently down over her hair, breathes the scent of her. His leg feels like it's been gnawed on by a werewolf, especially his hip (since he'd probably moved it more last night than he had in the past three months), but Claire feels so good against him that for once it doesn't matter.

Until he hears a door creak open upstairs, footsteps padding down the hall to the bathroom.

"Claire," he murmurs, strokes her shoulder gently. "Hey, Claire."

"What?" she says, mouth moving against his neck, and he can feel his cock twitch, start to rise. Claire, eyes still closed, slides a hand down his chest and stomach, and he can feel her grin.

"No," he says quickly, "no no, Claire, Sam's up. He'll probably be down any second."

"Oh," she says, disappointed, and her eyelashes flutter open against his throat, and _oh god _he hates his brother right now. Sam Winchester: cockblocking since 1983.

She sits up, reaches over his body to grab the shirt that's crumpled up under his right elbow, hair trailing over his chest as she leans. He winces and hisses a little as the bed shifts, then schools his expression as she glances at him.

"How is it possible that you look so good when you wake up?" Dean says, both to distract himself from the pain and because she really does, eyes bright, hair curly and disarrayed, pale skin almost shining in the sun that filters through the window.

"My ex-girlfriend called me Morning Glory," Claire says, presses a kiss against his mouth.

"Ex-girlfriend? You're fucking kidding me."

"She was so hot," Claire says, and he can tell from the twitch in the corner of her mouth that she knows exactly what this is doing to him. "These long legs, perfect breasts. She was from Senegal, used to speak to me in Wolof when we were in bed together."

"Claire," Dean growls, tries to think about monster guts and how badly his leg hurts, "_quit it._"

The toilet flushes upstairs and Claire grins, tugs her shirt on over her head and slides out of bed. Dean catches a glimpse of smooth thigh, the curve of her ass, before she's got her pants on, too.

He risks trying to sit up, manages to get himself to his elbows, pushes up and slides back so he's against the headboard. He rests for a moment, lets out a shaky breath he didn't even know he had been holding.

"You okay?" Claire asks, brow furrowed, coming to sit next to him.

"You kidding?" he says, forces a grin. "I'm spectacular."

She doesn't look convinced. "Hey," she says. "Did I hurt you? Was I too rough?"

"Jesus, no," Dean says, runs a hand up her arm. "You were perfect. It was amazing."

"Yeah," she agrees. "I think I'm glad I met you after this happened. Cause I don't even want to know what you would have done to me before."

Dean can't help the grin that spreads over his face.

"I'm hungry," Claire says decisively. "You guys need food that'll give you strength. For when you do the ghost thing."

Dean feels his heart rate pick up at the thought of the cabin, but he swallows, nods.

"I'm going to make pancakes," she says, and Dean snorts.

"You're makin' pancakes. Without milk. Or butter. Or eggs."

"You'll eat 'em and you'll like 'em," she says, standing, eyes him worriedly as he grits his teeth when the bed bounces up from her weight. "You really okay?"

"I'm great," he says. "Swear to god. You're gonna make coffee too, right?"

"At the risk of playing into your subservient domesticated female stereotypes, yes," she says, "I'm making coffee, too." She shoots him one last skeptical glance, and disappears into the kitchen.

As soon as she's gone Dean relaxes, lets his face screw up a little, takes a few deep, noisy breaths through his nose, jaw clenched. He hears the stairs creak as Sam comes down, and he remembers that he's completely naked under the blanket, feels a blush rise in his cheeks. _Jesus, Winchester_, he thinks, since when did you becomes such a _woman?_

Sam stops in the doorway of the living room, runs a hand through his sleep-tousled hair and looks Dean over, gives him a knowing smile.

"Sleep well?" he asks with a raise of his eyebrow.

"Shut up," Dean mutters, trying not to be embarrassed. It's been a while since he's had to answer to anyone. "Pass me my duffle?"

Sam complies, trudges over, and Dean notices that he's got dark circles under his eyes.

"Speaking of sleep," Dean says. "Did you?"

Sam shrugs, drops the duffle on the bed next to Dean.

"Nightmares?" Dean asks, digging out his Vicodin. Lately his brother's been whimpering in his sleep, jerking awake, terrified of something he won't mention. Dean knows he dreams about Jess, because sometimes he says her name during his nightmares, and it hasn't let up since those first few weeks after her death. If anything, it's gotten worse.

"Nah," Sam says. "Ribs were bugging me."

Dean knows he's lying, but he doesn't say anything, just screws open the bottle and knocks out a couple pills into his palm, works his mouth for a second to get some saliva. "You want one of these?"

Sam shakes his head. "I'm good."

Dean shrugs, swallows them down. Sam just stands there, looking totally zoned out, hands in the pockets of his red flannel pajama pants.

"Uh," Dean says. "I'm gonna get dressed now."

"Okay," Sam says, doesn't move.

"You gonna watch?"

"Oh," Sam says with a start, "sorry." He turns around to rummage in his own duffle, and Dean, holding the blanket around his waist, manages to get both legs out of bed and planted on the floor.

"Jesus," he groans, wishing the Vicodin would kick in faster. "I feel like I'm ninety-seven."

"Sore?" Sam asks, and there's a grin in his voice.

"I need a freaking hip replacement."

"Gross," Sam says, shaking out a t-shirt and sniffing it. "I'm gonna go brush my teeth." He heads for the stairs, and not for the first time, Dean is grateful that his brother always gives him space to get dressed. It's a difficult process, sometimes, and this morning is definitely going to be one of those days.

It hurts like a bitch, strapping on the bulky brace and then easing his leg into his jeans, tugging them up over his aching hip, and there's a light film of sweat on his forehead when he's done. He gives himself a second or two, feels for that uncoiling in his chest that means the Vicodin's started to work – it hasn't yet.

He pulls on a t-shirt with a tan henly over it, shrugs into his jacket and makes sure his cigarettes are in the pocket, works himself carefully upright on his crutches to make his way into the kitchen.

"Coffee's on the table," Claire says. "Where's Sam?"

"Brushing his teeth." Dean hesitates over a chair, stays standing instead, reaches out and grabs a mug of coffee, takes a huge gulp that sears his throat.

"Are you guys, like, open about this kind of thing?" she asks, flipping a suspicious-looking pancake onto a plate. Dean likes his pancakes white and fluffy. This one is thin and has the color of cardboard and Dean's willing to make a bet that the flavor's not much different.

"Uh…"

"I mean, sex," Claire clarifies, as if Dean didn't know. "Are you going to talk about it together?"

"Uh," Dean says again. That'd be a no. He used to tell Sam every sordid detail, just to see the look on his brother's face, but not when Sam _knows _the girl. That just makes it awkward. Plus, Dean's grown up in the four years they've been apart. He thinks.

"How come you're in your jacket?" she asks, noticing.

"Oh," he says, "just gonna have a quick smoke."

She nods, makes a face. "This is why we could never have anything beyond a sexual relationship."

Dean splutters his mouthful of coffee. "Cause I'm a smoker?"

"Among other things." She grins, and he shakes his head, props up one of his crutches on the wall and balances his coffee mug in one hand, heads outside.

The Vicodin's finally starting to work, and the white-hot pain of his leg is lulling to a dull throb as he eases himself down onto the top step. He only has two cigarettes left, and he smokes the first one quickly, trying to remember if his other pack is in the Impala or in his duffle.

Sam wouldn't believe him if he said it aloud, but he actually has been trying to cut back lately. At least, trying to be more aware of how much he's smoking. He'd started this pack yesterday morning and is only finishing it now; that's progress, in his book. Maybe he should keep a list.

Total as of 9:17am: One.

Maybe he should just try and never smoke more than one in a sitting.

Total as of 9:20am: Two.

Starting tomorrow. He's a little too on-edge today. He'd been half-hoping that maybe, just maybe, getting laid would get rid of whatever was feeding his panic, would chill him out, but it hadn't, not really; he still feels a spike of adrenaline zing through his body when he thinks about what he's going to have to do. Go into that fucking cabin.

He passes a hand over his eyes, takes a long drag. He can't calm himself down because he isn't really sure what's freaking him out. He's afraid of the house crumbling down around them, sure; but it's not even that he's afraid of getting hurt again. He's realized that living in this constant pain has made him just a little bit reckless when it comes to getting injured – he _already_ hurts, all the time; what's a little more pain? It's not the pain he fears. He just – fuck – he really doesn't want to end up in the hospital again. He hasn't been near a hospital since the accident, and he wonders if he would have a similar reaction as to the cabin – somehow he thinks he might. Just the thought makes his blood go cold, his hands clammy.

How the fuck is he gonna do this?

***

Inside, Sam follows the smell of pancakes into the kitchen, looks around.

"Where's Dean?" he asks Claire, trying not to feel awkward around her, 'cause she did just sleep with his brother, and that's a little weird. Plus she tried to sleep with him first. Plus he can kind of see through her tank top. Avert eyes.

"Smoking," she says, puts a cup of coffee into his hand.

"Of course he is." Sam sits at the table, sips his coffee.

"How are your ribs?"

He shrugs. "I've had worse. A lot worse."

She puts three plates on the table, along with a jug of maple syrup and a stack of strange-looking pancakes.

"Are you two gonna be okay?" she asks, sitting down next to him and giving him a stern look. "I mean, you with your ribs, and Dean – I think Dean has a lot more trouble with his leg than he lets on."

Sam snorts, tries not to think about on what she may be basing that information. "I know that. Believe me, I know. But we've both been doing this for a long time – our whole lives. If we feel like we're in serious danger, we'll, you know, get out and re-group, think of a better plan."

"Eat," she says, spears a pancake and drops it onto his plate with an ominous-sounding _thwack. _"I'm not saying I don't trust you. I'm just –" She shrugs, pours maple syrup over her plate. "I'm worried about you. And you've probably gathered that Dean and I slept together last night, huh?"

Sam chokes on a mouthful of spongy pancake. "Uh, yeah."

"Well, now I've got _emotions _riding on his physical well-being, no pun intended. You too, of course, cause I just really _like _both of you and I want you to be okay, but especially Dean. If everything works out I'm kind of hoping you'll stay one more night, you know? And I'd like him to be in one piece."

Sam nods, wondering on what planet Claire was raised, on what planet it's considered appropriate behavior to discuss the sex you had – and are apparently hoping to continue having – with someone's _brother._ Because, _no. _

"I'm just being honest," Claire continues. "I just want you to be careful."

"We'll be careful," Sam promises, and Claire pats him on the knee, takes a bite of her pancake.

Dean chooses that moment to come back inside, pausing in the doorway to offer them a wide grin that seems a bit false, somehow, to Sam. He lowers himself down into a chair, and Sam watches him carefully, catches the tightening of his jaw and the way he grips the table as he tries to settle himself; it's clear from the way he sits that his hip really is hurting him.

Claire catches Sam's eye, all of a sudden, and he sees that she's been watching Dean, too, has marked his pain, is upset by it – and Sam realizes, in that brief moment of solidarity, how lonely it is, sometimes, to worry about someone all by yourself. And he gets just one fleeting taste of how his dad must have felt, being a single parent, no one to share the burden of worry with… and he softens towards John, just a little. Just a little.

"Have some pancakes," Claire says, puts two on Dean's plate. "You want some more coffee?"

"Yeah," Dean says, "thanks, I can—"

"I got it," Claire says, rising before he can move, goes to get the coffeepot from the stove.

"For someone who bitches about feminism all the time, you've been treating us pretty damn well," Dean says, holding out his mug for a refill. "Cooking for us, _serving _us –"

Claire interrupts him with a hard palm to the back of his head. "I know you're just trying to provoke me, but it's not very funny."

They eat in silence for a while, until Sam shovels the last sticky, strangely-textured bite into his mouth and swallows, puts his fork down.

"Claire," he says, "can you help me find the ingredients we need for this spell?"

"Sure," she says, looks doubtful. "Is this really going to work? A _spell? _Not that I don't believe in magic, but – I've never – it's never been – I – yeah, I don't think I really believe in magic."

"It'll work," Sam says. "It's not a miracle. Just a cloaking spell. Makes us harder to see, kind of blurs our presence? So we'll be, you know… harder to hit."

"How are you going to… make the house safe? Like, how do you kill a spirit?"

Dean exchanges a look with Sam. "Well. If our theory's right, there's the remains of… someone… buried somewhere in the house. We think they're under the stairs, or possibly upstairs somewhere. If we can find their remains and destroy them, the spirit will be released."

Claire nods, chews. "So. If the… the baby's bones, if my brother's bones are in the house, you have to destroy them."

"Yeah."

"God, this is fucked up."

"I know," Dean says, runs an awkward hand down her shoulder, grips her forearm. Sam looks away. His brother has never been too good at comforting people, unless he's shouting something like _It'll all be okay, just get the fuck out of here! _and this small gesture, Dean's thumb rubbing circles on Claire's wrist, makes Sam uncomfortable for some reason.

"Uh, so these ingredients," Sam says, digging into his back pocket and unfolding the list.

"Right," Claire says, stands.

"You guys need my help on this?" Dean asks, pushing away his empty plate.

"Assembling ingredients?" Sam says. "I think we got it. Why?"

"Need some fresh air," Dean says, reaching for his crutches.

"Bullshit," Claire says. "First wash the dishes. Then poison yourself."

"So this is feminism, huh?" Dean asks, steps a bit too close, backs her up against the sink.

"No," she says, pushes him gently, not hard enough to throw him off balance, "this is equality. I cook, you clean."

"And Sam?"

"Sam's doing the spell thing."

"I'm doing the spell thing," Sam agrees. "Where do you keep your spices? Uh, herbs?"

It doesn't take long to get things together, and by the time Dean has washed the dishes and is sitting at the kitchen table peeling the cellophane off a fresh pack of cigarettes, they've got everything set out on the counters, and Sam is mixing lavender oil with cayenne pepper.

"Hey," Dean says. "Should we do Claire, too?"

"_You_ already did, last night," Claire says, cracks up while Dean and Sam stare at her, vaguely scandalized. "Sorry," she says when she realizes no one else is laughing. "Jesus. You guys are _prudes._"

"Yeah, we'll include Claire in the spell," Sam says, deciding to ignore her. "For safety's sake. It should be ready in a few minutes."

"I'm just gonna smoke one cigarette," Dean says, rising. "Don't start without me."

"I wanna make another joke here so bad," Claire says. "But I feel like it won't be appreciated."

"Good call," Sam says. "Pass the sage, please."

***

Once they're all under the protection spell, it doesn't take long for Sam and Dean to get ready, stuffing a duffle full of weapons that has Claire staring, arms crossed over her middle in a strangely childish gesture.

"You guys are really violent," she says, not a question, and Dean looks up from where he's loading the sawed-off at her kitchen table.

"Yeah," he says. "But the shit we kill is a lot worse."

"I'm a pacifist," Claire says. "But the stuff you've told me about, demons and werewolves… I can't think of anything else to do, except kill them, I guess. You can't throw them in monster-jail. Can't reform them. It makes me feel… weird. Knowing that I'm okay with this, just because they're not human. It feels like… species racism."

"Claire," Dean says. "You know you sound ridiculous, right?"

"Yeah," she says. "Probably. I'm just trying to understand this in the only way I know how. It's hard, Dean."

"I know," he says, and because Sam isn't in the room, he puts a hand on her hip, tugs her closer. She leans down into him, takes him by surprise when she kisses him open-mouthed, quick and deep.

"You taste like maple syrup cigarettes," she says. "I kind of like it. Is that weird?"

"_You're _weird," Dean says. "You're really, really weird."

"You ready?" Sam asks loudly from the doorway.

"As ready as we're gonna be," Dean says.

"Let's go, then."

The ride down on the golf cart seems quicker than it did yesterday, and Dean sits up front again, hands clenched around the edges of his seat, cigarette clenched between his teeth, his brother's hands clenched around his shoulders. He can feel a vein pulsing in his forehead, tries to think calming thoughts, imagines cleaning a gun, driving the Impala, undressing Claire.

"You okay?" Sam asks, the closest anyone's come to mentioning Dean's freak-out of the day before.

"I don't know," Dean says honestly, and Claire reaches out and squeezes his good knee.

"The cabin's coming up," she says, and sure enough, not thirty seconds later, they come out into the clearing.

Dean forces himself to look at it, feels his blood pressure spike and his heartbeat intensify as he takes a shaky drag off his cigarette, keeps his eyes on the sagging porch, the broken windows. He knows Sam and Claire are watching him, waiting for his reaction, and he gives himself a moment to make sure he's not going to pass out before giving them a trembling thumbs-up sign without meeting their eyes.

"It's all right?" Sam says, climbing down off of the golf cart.

"I think so," Dean says, handing Sam his crutches as he eases himself down, not letting his eyes leave the cabin. His heart is going a mile a minute, but he doesn't feel faint, doesn't feel dizzy.

"Claire," Sam says, "why don't you stay on the cart."

"Like a get-away car?" she asks. "So I can just start it right up if you come busting out screaming like yesterday?"

"I wasn't screaming," Sam protests, "I was hollering a little, maybe. But yeah. Like a get-away car."

"We ready?" Dean demands, making sure his gun is settled securely in the back of his jeans, just wanting to get this over with.

"Yeah," Sam says. "I am if you are."

"I am," Dean says. "I totally am."

"All right."

"All right."

"Be careful," Claire says. "Seriously. Both of you."

"We will be," Sam says, and Dean nods, swallows, feels his throat thickening as he watches his brother take a step towards the cabin. A second later, he follows, feels like the knee of his good leg has turned to jelly and is going to give up on him any moment, send him crashing to the dirt.

But he takes another step forward, and another, and another, until he's standing at the base of the porch steps. He takes a deep breath, grips the railing and gets himself up the first step, and the second, and the third, until he and Sam are standing right in front of the door. There's a buzzing in his head, like white noise, and he can't help himself, reaches out and grips the sleeve of Sam's jacket.

"Dude," Sam says. "You all right?"

"I," Dean manages. "I don't know if—" he tightens his grip on Sam's sleeve, all of a sudden finds himself gripping Sam's arm, and Sam's grabbed his shoulder.

"It's okay," Sam says. "It's okay if you can't do this. We'll think of something different. I can go in alone, I've got the spell, it—"

"No," Dean says, realizes that, for some reason, the solidity of his brother's arm under his hand, and Sam's huge palm wrapped around his shoulder, have made him feel a hundred times better, stronger. "No," he repeats. "It's now or never."

Sam looks at him, nods, takes his hand away from Dean's shoulder to open the door.

Dean feels a little panicked, without Sam's hand there, but he grits his teeth, steels himself to enter.

Sam's hand settles on the doorknob, and he turns once and –

Nothing happens.

"Uh," Sam says, puts a little more weight on it. Nothing. He leans back and in one fast motion has hurled himself at the door with a firm shoulder, gasps from the pain to his ribs and doubles over, while the door doesn't even quiver. Which, huh. Is pretty fuckin' bizarre.

"Dude," Sam says, still folded in on himself, looks at Dean. "This isn't just locked. It's been sealed."


	9. Chapter 9

Ten minutes later and the door still won't open, and a quick investigation has revealed that all the windows are similarly sealed shut.

"I'm tellin' you," Dean says. "The machete."

He and Sam have retreated a safe distance from the cabin, Sam scowling at it so ferociously Dean thinks maybe his brother believes he can scare the thing open, while Dean's fighting an embarrassing surge of relief that whispers _Maybe you won't have to go inside after all. _

"Dude, no machete," Sam says. "It's just gonna piss off whatever's inside. I mean, even more than it's already pissed off. Plus, a couple of those carpenters were killed with their own tools. You wanna get diced, be my guest, but I'm not willing to risk it."

"We were gonna bring in rifles," Dean points out.

"Yeah, but it's pretty hard to shoot yourself with a rifle. Much easier to swing an axe at your own throat."

Dean concedes the point with a shrug, takes a drag of his cigarette. This is so unfair, this whole goddamn situation. He had been ready to go in, had geared himself up, and now he's wound so tight he feels like his veins are going to burst. He wants to use the machete mainly because he needs some sort of outlet for this jangling energy, something besides chain-smoking, which he sometimes wishes were a more violent act. Man. Cigarettes would be fuckin' _perfect _if you could shoot them, too.

Not for the first time he wishes that he could still pace, instead of just leaning on the stupid golf cart like this.

Claire lays a hand on his arm, squeezes once, like she knows how on-edge he is. "But Sam, besides a machete, what can you open it with?"

"There's a couple unsealing charms in Dad's journal, aren't there?" Sam asks.

"Think so," Dean says. "Pass me the duffle and I'll check."

"This is my fault," Sam says, frustrated. "If I'd been more prepared yesterday, I could have ended this. All I did was give the spirit the tip-off that we were coming. Goddammit."

"Sam, yesterday you went in alone," Claire says, rubbing Dean's arm absently. "And you didn't even know what you were working with; I mean, you didn't even have a theory."

"I know, it's just –" Sam gives an annoyed little growl, grips his hair.

"Why don't you look through this," Dean says, and passes Sam the journal so his hands are free to tap another cigarette from his pack. Total as of 11:10am: Nine. _Fuck._

"Chill out a second," Claire says, puts a hand over his as he fumbles for his lighter. He glares at her guiltily, feeling like a kid who's been rebuked by the school librarian.

"Just take a couple deep breaths," she says, and she says it soft, right by his ear, so Sam, muttering to himself over the journal, can't hear. Her breath sends a shiver down his spine. "Breathe in, slow."

Dean breathes in, but it's more a sharp gulp of air because she's worked a hand down to grab his ass.

"Now exhale."

Dean does.

"You should try yoga," Claire says. "To help you regulate your breathing. I've noticed that you're a very erratic breather, and I'm sure you could find a yoga class for the disabled."

"Can we please focus?" Sam says before Dean has a chance to tell Claire that he knows just the place she can stick her disabled yoga class.

"What'd you find?" Dean asks, ducks his head to light his cigarette.

"Nothing," Sam says, snaps the journal shut. "Zilch."

"Fuck," Dean groans through a breath of smoke.

"Hey," Claire says, "hey. What if – what if _I_ tried to get in?"

"No," Dean and Sam say together, and she crosses her arms, taps a foot on the frosted grass.

"It's _my_ cabin. And I'm not the one who busted in there yesterday, so maybe it won't be sealed on me."

"She's got a point," Dean says. "Much as I hate to admit it."

"Can't hurt to try," Claire says, looks at Sam. "Better than a machete, isn't it?"

"True," Sam says. "All right. You go first, try and open the door, and we'll be right behind you."

"But Claire," Dean says. "You're outta there the second we're in, if this works, okay? You just turn and get the hell out."

"Fine by me," Claire says, starts moving towards the door, Sam following.

"Now?" Dean says, can't help himself from balking. "I, uh, I'm not done with –"

"Put it out," Sam says. "Come on, man. You can do this. You were fine before."

"Yeah," Dean mutters, drops his cigarette and crushes it under his foot, pushes himself away from the golf cart.

He hauls himself up the stairs, grabs Sam's elbow under the pretense of catching his balance, but really he just feels better when he's making contact with his little brother, which is pretty fuckin' lame, but there it is. It slows his heart from a gallop to a trot.

Sam doesn't really look at Dean, but he wraps one big hand around his shoulder, holds tight, and Dean leans into it ever so slightly.

"Okay?" Claire asks, hand hovering over the doorknob, looking uncertain.

"Okay," Sam says, releases Dean to grip his rifle.

Claire's hand closes over the doorknob, and it clicks open sweet and easy, like it had never been stuck fast. She turns, widens her eyes, holds the door wide open.

"Watch out," Sam says, surges forward into the cabin like he expects the door to slam shut any second. Dean follows, swings himself forward on his crutches as fast as he can, before he loses his nerve.

"Wait outside," he tells Claire. "Leave the door open."

"Okay," she says, sticks a curious head into the cabin and peeks around. "Jesus, it's nasty in here."

"Outside," Sam says urgently.

She disappears from the doorway, and Dean takes a deep breath, looks around the room. There are a few articles of busted furniture; a beat-up green couch leaking its stuffing around the floor, a cracked leather armchair, an upside-down coffee table. The paint on the walls is flaking away to reveal the wood underneath, and the floor creaks ominously as Sam takes a step forward, raises his rifle.

_Dean takes a step forward, raises his rifle._

"_Come on, you bastard," he mutters, eyes scanning the corners of the dim, musty room. There's movement in his peripheral vision and he swings around, lets off a blast of rocksalt that sinks harmlessly into the far wall, no poltergeist in sight._

_Dean curses, hears his father call something up the stairs as he takes a step back into the center of the room, but John's voice is drowned out by the crack of wood as Dean's leg goes through the floorboards._

"_Fuckin' perfect," Dean says, starts to pull himself free, but there's another crack, and then another, like gunshots, and he has time for one dusty inhale of breath before his world completely explodes._

Sam hears a sharp pull of breath and turns around to see that Dean's face has gone white, his wide, wild eyes staring at nothing. He's swaying dangerously on his crutches, fingers loose around the grips.

Sam moves fast, grasps his brother just as his knees begin to buckle and he starts sagging towards the floor. But as soon as he grabs Dean's shoulder, the sight returns to his brother's eyes and he straightens under Sam's hand, manages to keep himself upright without assistance.

"Not now," Sam pleads, casting his eyes around, expecting a 4x4 to come flying at their heads any second, but the spell seems to be working so far. "Dean, please, not now."

"I'm good," Dean says, though his face is still the color of uncooked dough. "I'm good, I'm good, I won't, I'm good."

Sam starts to pull away, then thinks better of it, stays so his shoulder is still touching his brother's. "You sure? You need to leave?"

"No," Dean says, takes another sharp breath that makes Sam nervous for a moment, but the color is returning to his cheeks. "I don't know what that was. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine."

It sounds a little too much like Dean is trying to convince himself, but he seems like he's got it more or less under control, so Sam nods once, somewhat helplessly.

"EMF," Dean says, like he's trying to remind himself of the steps. He clutches the machine in one hand, waves it around a little vaguely.

"The stairs," Sam says, and sure enough, the thing lights up and starts whirring frantically as they approach.

"I'll go up," Sam says. "You gonna be all right down here alone?"

"You can't go up alone," Dean says. "Sammy –"

"You wanna come up with me?"

Dean's face goes ashen once more, but he swallows and repeats, "You can't go up alone. I'll – I'm fine. I'll come."

"Jesus, you sure?"

"Yeah, fuck, I mean, I think so."

"Okay," Sam says. "I'll go first. You think you can get up these all right? You need help?"

"Hell no," Dean says, and Sam's relieved to hear irritation in his brother's voice.

Sam moves forward, grips the rifle in one hand and reaches out to grip the banister in the other and –

"Get _down!" _he hears Dean shout, and feels his brother hipcheck him against the wall as a leg of the coffee table whizzes past his face.

"Fuck!" Sam hisses, flattens himself against the wall as Dean does the same, braces himself for an onslaught. Nothing. The house is still once more, furniture perched on the ground where it ought to be.

"What do we do?" Dean asks.

"I don't fuckin' know," Sam says. He steps away from the wall, puts a tentative foot on the stairs before Dean can stop him.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Dean hisses.

"Just seeing if –"

"_SAM!_"

But Dean's warning comes too late this time, and Sam feels white-hot pain blossom in his shoulder as the other leg of the coffee table slams down on him so hard that he drops to his knees. He stays there for a long moment, dazed, then looks up to see the leg coming back down at his head, and then everything goes black.

Dean is hit right after Sam, a blow that cracks soundly right across his bad hip, and _JESUS FUCKING CHRIST,_ though he sees stars, real, intergalactic stars that smatter a glimmering pattern over everything, he manages to stay on his feet, manages to see Sam go down, sees the second blow crack across his brother's skull and open up a line of red across Sam's temple.

The leg of the coffee table raises up as if it's being wielded by invisible hands, _by invisible hands?_ and Dean takes a chance, lets loose with a blast of carefully-aimed rocksalt. There's a dull thud and for a brief moment, Dean catches a glimpse of a woman's body as the rocksalt connects with her, and then she's disappeared again, and the leg of the table drops to the floor, inanimate.

Dean doesn't waste any time, just gets over to his brother and rolls Sam over. He's out cold but his breathing is steady, thank god, and the slice across his forehead isn't deep.

They've practiced this kind of thing before, not too much because it's pretty freakin' awkward for Sam to lie around pretending to be unconscious while Dean grapples with his prone body, but they _have_ practiced, for cases just like this. Dean lets his crutches clatter to the floor and follows them down, sliding down the wall till he's sitting with both legs splayed out in front of him. Once he's on the ground he reaches over and grabs his brother by the shoulders of his jacket, pulls and heaves as hard and as fast as he can, until most of his brother's torso is draped over his lap. He takes a moment to catch his breath, and thank god he does, because when he looks up there's a board peeling its way off the wall about ten feet from them.

He blasts the ghost with rocksalt again, her body flickering in and out of visibility like an old movie, and he sees her face this time, her wide empty eyes. He does a rough calculation, figures he has about two more minutes to get them the fuck out of the cabin, so, making sure Sam is secure on his lap, he reaches his hands back and starts pulling them both along, using his good leg as much as he can to push himself backwards.

Since he fucked up his leg Dean's been working out his upper body a lot more, trying to compensate, and he's thoroughly thankful that he has, because though he has to stop briefly to tug Sam more firmly over his lap, he makes really fucking good time; gets a couple wicked splinters in his ass, but reaches the door quicker than he would have thought possible.

He doesn't relax until he's slid backwards over the doorjamb and he can hear Claire's frantic voice behind him, feels the porch steps creak as she runs up them and slams the door, sees her hands come down over his shoulders towards Sam.

"Is he—"

"He's fine," Dean says, "just grab his jacket, like that, yeah, the shoulders. Don't worry about hurting him – just get him down those steps, do you think you can—"

"I got it," Claire says, and drags Sam off Dean's lap just as he flutters open his eyes.

"What…" Sam says, fighting towards consciousness, but Claire doesn't let it stop her, just pulls him down the steps with more strength than Dean would have given her credit for – adrenaline does amazing fucking things – and has pulled him about fifteen feet away from the house so he's lying on the grass. Sam has half-figured out what is going on, and helps her a little, but mostly it's pure power on Claire's part, and Dean allows himself a moment of appreciation as he pulls himself up with the railing and gets down the steps as quickly as he can, uses the rifle to walk a couple feet.

As his own adrenaline fades, though, reality kicks in, reality in the form of intense, concentrated pain in his hip, and he stops after a few steps, sways.

"Claire," he calls, "can you," and she comes quickly, tucks a slim shoulder up under his broad one. He's hesitant to put too much weight on her, but they're not going far, so he gives in, leans on her, and she takes it without complaint.

Dean sinks down onto the grass next to his brother as Sam tries to push himself up onto his elbows, stops with a gasp of pain and flops back down.

"What the fuck," Sam groans, eyes still a little unfocused, blood trailing down his face and cheek, down to the neck of his jacket.

"You are _so _concussed," Dean says, and he notices, a propos of nothing, that it's the same way Sam used to say, 'I am _so _telling Dad.'

"An' I have a dis-lo-ca-ted shoulder," Sam says, slurring a little. "_Ow._"

"Stay awake, Sam, okay?" Dean says. "Christ. That is one pissed-off spirit. I haven't seen anything like that since Delaware, you remember, your senior year of high school? Corporeal but fuckin' _invisible, _not fuckin' _fair_."

"So did you see it?" Claire asks, down on the ground next to them, one hand resting carefully on Sam's chest, keeping him down, knowing instinctively what to do without being told.

"Briefly," Dean says.

"Is it… do you think…"

"It's a woman," Dean says. "Blue dress. Short, dark hair, curly. Kinda. Kinda looks like you."

"My mother," she says.

"Looks that way," Dean says tiredly. "I'm sorry, Claire."

"It's okay," Claire says, though he can see that tears have sprung to her eyes, and he doesn't know how to comfort her, feels his heart sink in guilt and empathy.

"We gotta g'back i'there 'n kill th' scary…" Sam works his mouth for a second.

"Pipe down, brain injury," Dean says. "You're not killing any scaries, not today."

Not for a while, probably, because though his brother's pupils are blessedly staying equal size, that was undoubtedly a doozy of a head-thump. Dean fights down a pulse of worry.

"Who _is _going to kill the scary?" Claire says. "I mean, the spirit. My mother. She's already dead. Can we kill her?"

"We still don't know why she's in the cabin," Dean says. "You tell us she was cremated, right? The only thing we can think of is… you know… your little brother's remains must be in there somewhere."

"Remains," Claire says. "What exactly are remains?"

"Like bones," Dean says, reaches over and smacks Sam on the arm to keep him from nodding off. "Any body part, really. Hair, teeth, sometimes even an object that the spirit was attached… to… in…" He trails off, catching Claire's expression.

"Blood?" she asks. "Is blood a remain?"

"Yeah," Sam says from the ground. "Blood."

"My mother died giving birth," Claire says slowly, fingers fretting together and twisting in each other, a small, distraught gesture that strikes Dean deep in his gut. "In a room on the second floor. She – she bled. A lot. Bled to death. And there was… it soaked these sheets. And my dad put them in this chest in the room where she died." She pauses, pulls in a shaky breath, wipes her eyes. "God, it's really fucking gross, but it's also pretty upsetting for me," she says.

"Uh, yeah," Dean says. "No shit."

"So, do you think…"

"That'd do it," Dean says grimly. "Fuck. I don't know _how _I'm gonna get up there without being beat within an inch of my life. Your mother is pretty fiery. Like you."

Claire cracks a smile, but it fades quickly. "I sat with her, that night. She… she _really _didn't want to die. She was afraid of leaving me with my dad. Like, really afraid. It's probably my fault she's still here."

"It's not your fault, Claire," Dean says forcefully, scoots closer to her so he can settle a hand on her face, wipe a tear away with his thumb. He ignores the bolt of almost blinding pain that the movement sends through his hip.

"Hey," Claire says, in a completely different tone. "Dean. You think – I mean, she let me into the cabin… and if she's here because of me… or… something… do you think that maybe…"

"No," Dean says, catching on. "Hell no, Claire, don't even think about it. Too dangerous."

"Hell no," Sam echoes.

"It's too dangerous for me, but not for you?" she says, and he's learned, in the short time he's known her, to recognize that tone. It's the sound of an aggrieved feminist. And sure enough,

"It's because I'm a woman and you're a man, isn't it. You don't think I can handle myself."

"That's not it," Dean says, "don't pull that woman card, come on. I've been doing this all my life, Claire. Literally. _All my life._ I know how. You don't."

"Well, you're _clearly_ doing something right, because your brother _isn't _lying on the ground with a concussion and a dislocated shoulder."

"Maybe is' not dislocated," Sam says, moves it experimentally. "_Fuck! _It is."

"I'm the most able-bodied person here," Claire points out. "Dean, I just watched you scoot backwards out of that cabin on your ass with a seven-foot-tall unconscious boy draped across your lap. You _scooted out backwards on your ass._"

Dean fights for a moment between being seriously offended, seriously embarrassed, and seriously amused, because when she puts it like that, it sounds pretty fuckin' absurd.

"Scooted," he says, and sees the corner of her mouth twitch up – and that's it, he loses it, an outpouring of tension and fear that bubbles out in slightly hysterical laughter that shakes his whole body.

Claire is laughing too, bent over double, hands over her face like maybe she could be crying a little, too. "_Scooted,_" she repeats, "_scooted._"

"Who's got th' head trauma, here, again?" Sam says, still flat on the earth. "You guys're fuckin' craaaazzzy."

"Seriously, though," Claire says, wiping her eyes. "I'm going in. I'll just – ask her to let me pass through safely. I'll – explain it."

"Claire," Dean says, laughter fading. "You can't explain anything to a spirit. It's not your mom in that house, anymore."

"I just have a feeling," Claire says, "okay?" She starts to climb to her feet.

"Claire, _no,_" Dean says.

"No," Sam agrees. "Shitty fuckin' idea."

"Who's going to stop me?" she asks, arms crossed. "You? Okay. Get up and stop me."

"I will," Dean says, but he doesn't need to try to know that there's no way he'll be able to get up, not without his crutches, and not with the blow he just got dealt on his hip. He tries anyway, plants his hands flat on the ground and manages to get his good leg underneath him, but _up? _Kind of out of the question.

"That's what I thought," Claire says after a moment. She squares her shoulders. "I'll be back."

"Wait!" Dean says. "Fuck." She's right – there's literally _nothing _he can do to stop her, and her logic _does _make a twisted sort of sense, so he says, "Have you ever shot a rifle?"

"Yeah."

_Yeah? _Huh. That'll be a conversation – later. "Take this. Keep your eyes peeled. The spirit… your mother… she's invisible, but she's solid, so watch for anything that's floating, or moving by itself. Okay? And if you see that, just start shooting in the general vicinity of whatever's floating. And don't – don't let your feelings – just shoot, okay? She's already dead, so it won't hurt her, but you're _not, _and I'd _really _like to keep it that way."

"You and me both," Claire says, looking nervous for the first time.

"If you need help, scream," Dean says, "and I'll scoot my ass in there and rescue you."

"My hero," Sam sighs from the ground, and he's so addled he might not be sarcastic, which mean he's going to get _so made fun of _later on when he's cognizant.

"Thanks," Claire says. "I'll be out soon. I'm sure."

Dean feels a little flutter of worry, and can't help himself, reaches out and grips her ankle awkwardly.

She turns back and her face softens, and she leans down and kisses him, quickly. "Don't worry," she says, and fat fucking chance of that.

She moves towards the porch and Dean watches her go, his heart racing, feeling more helpless than he's felt since leaving the hospital; and there have been some times when he's felt pretty fucking helpless.

"This sucks balls," Sam says. "Can you fix my shoulder now?"

"Yeah," Dean says, pulls himself closer to Sam, tries not to think about how much his leg hurts, because if he thinks about it he might cry, just a little. Stupid bitch knew right where to go with that table leg. He wonders if she's done any permanent damage – besides all the permanent damage already there. Maybe she knocked a titanium screw loose or something.

He helps Sam sit up, and he manages to get himself up onto his good knee for leverage, though a couple tears do sneak out and gather in the corners of his eyes.

"One," Dean says, and Sam lets out a huff of breath to prepare himself. Dean moves on "Two," and there's a horrific crunching noise, and Sam yells and grabs his arm, bends over double, but the shoulder's back in the joint.

"Aaahhhahahaha," Sam says, "oh my fucking, oh my god."

Dean feels in his pocket for his cigarettes as Sam streams curses, shakes one out of the pack, looks anxiously towards the house. So far he hasn't heard anything from inside, but that doesn't necessarily bode well. Some of the worst fucking things in the world start out with silence.

"Can't believe she's in there," Sam says, easing himself down again carefully.

"No shit."

"She's brave."

"Yeah."

"S'our job, not hers."

"I know that." Dean feels a wave of guilt wash over him, almost as strong as the pain in his leg, and he takes a long drag of his cigarette.

"But it's not our fault," Sam says. "S'not _your _fault. Know you're gonna think that. S'not true. S'a weird case, man. _Mother._"

"Yeah." Dean takes another drag. Mother. The most sacred idea the Winchester family has, besides Mary.

"I never had one of those," Sam says, like he's reading Dean's head. "Wanted one."

Dean snorts smoke, though it isn't funny.

"M'gonna be embarrassed later," Sam says after a moment.

"Dude," Dean says, "you're concussed. It's cool."

"Mmm kay." Sam's eyes drift closed, and Dean reaches over and smacks his now-located shoulder. Sam yelps, and Dean feels guilty, but his eyes spring open.

"You think she's okay?" Dean asks, straining his ears for any kind of sound. "Should I…"

But he can't. Nothing he can do. Can't go in. Can't even get up.

"Fuck this shit," Dean says, so frustrated he can barely see, and worry mounting in his chest till he can barely breathe. "Where the fuck is she?"

As if in answer, a rifle shot cracks out through the stillness, and both boys jump.

"Shit," Dean says, and fuck it, he drops his cigarette and starts scooting himself closer to the cabin, ignoring the way his leg threatens to break off of his body and start its own country.

But before he start really panicking, the door swings open and Claire emerges, clutching a handful of white sheets, a rusty stain visible in their folds. She's also holding Dean's crutches.

"Kay," says, dropping the bundle of sheets and crutches at Dean's awestruck feet. "I did it."

And then she bursts into tears.

To be continued…


	10. Chapter 10

Dean and Claire salt and burn the bloodied sheets in Claire's backyard while Sam holds an icepack to his head and watches, propped up against the clapboard siding of the house. He's not slurring his speech anymore, but he's dizzy, nauseous, and his ribs are throbbing in time with his shoulder.

Dean swears he's all right, just got nicked in the hip, but his jaw is clenched and his face is too white, and every movement looks like it's going to make him puke. Claire ends up doing most of the work, shaking the salt out and kneeling to put Dean's Zippo to the sheets while Dean concentrates on staying upright.

Claire is quiet and teary, and even though everything technically was a success, with the danger of the spirit dissipating along with the smoke into the grey sky, Sam can't help but feel that they've failed this hunt in a major way.

Claire and Sam go up the steep back stairs while Dean heads around to the front, meets them in the kitchen.

"Sam," Dean says, and Sam can't help but notice that his knuckles are white where he's gripping his crutches, "we should strap that shoulder."

"Yeah."

"Just gimme a second and I'll do it."

"Okay."

Dean nods once and makes a beeline for the living room.

Sam follows, leans against the doorjamb and watches as Dean fumbles open the Vicodin, dry-swallows the pills with a grimace.

"You okay?" Sam asks.

"How's the head?" Dean answers.

"How's the leg?"

They look at each other for a moment, Dean on one side of the huge fold-out bed and Sam on the other, until Dean cracks a grim smile.

"Christ," he says. "What a fucking mess."

"It's over, though, right?" Claire asks, coming into the living room.

"Should be," Dean says wearily. "Should be." He looks at them, says, "Your shoulder, Sam."

"Yeah."

"You gotta…" he pauses, like it's suddenly an effort to speak. "Gotta take some ibuprofin. For the swelling. But later. Cause of your head."

"Okay."

Dean licks his lips, swallows. "I need to sit down for a second."

"Okay, dude. Take your time."

Dean lowers himself onto the armchair with a wince, leaning hard on his good left side. Sam can see that his fists are clenched tight.

"You okay?" Claire asks, coming over to perch on the arm of the chair next to him.

"I'm fine," Dean says.

"Bullshit," she says. "You take your drugs?"

"Yeah." His breath hitches a little, and Sam sits down on the fold-out bed, presses the icepack to his head and wishes to god that there were something he could do for his brother.

"You have to breathe," Claire tells him. "Just breathe through it till the meds kick in."

Dean manages to roll his eyes, but he gets in a few deep, even breaths.

Claire puts a hand up and smoothes his hair back from his forehead, and Sam sees that there's a few drops of cold sweat beading at his temple. Claire keeps up the movement, slow and rhythmic, until Dean is breathing ragged but regular.

"I should be comforting you," Dean says, then seems to realize that he just admitted Claire was comforting him, and tries to backtrack. "I mean, how are – are you okay?"

"I think so," Claire says, and is silent for a moment, then, "You were only half-right."

"Huh?"

"You said that the spirit wasn't my mom, not really. But. It was, though. Kind of. I mean, she was like… a broken record, the things she said, kept repeating herself. But it was _her._"

"That's a good way to explain it," Dean says, shifts backwards in the chair with a grimace. "A broken record. Spirits are one-tracks, they run in the same grooves all the time. It's like, if your mom was the digitally-remastered four-disc Led Zeppelin boxed set, her spirit would be the first thirty seconds of _Tangerine _on vinyl_._ Over and over. You know?"

"_Tangerine,_" Claire sings tunelessly. "_Tangerine… living reflections from a dream._ I think I get it. What you're saying. I think I get it."

"_Living reflections from a dream,_" Sam says. "It's like that, too. Ghosts."

"It's just fucked the fuck up," Claire says, and puts the heel of her hand to her eye like she's trying not to cry again. "I didn't even really remember what she looked like. I was only ten."

Dean and Sam are silent, because what can you say to that? Sam's just about to throw up from guilt and the pounding in his head and shoulder, when Claire says,

"Thank you guys so much."

"For _what?_" Dean asks. "You do realize you just did that hunt pretty much all on your own, don't you? Me 'n Sam didn't do anything except get the shit kicked out of us."

"But you _came_. Without you… I mean, my mother – she was a good person. I don't know why her spirit was so violent, but I swear, she was so wonderful when she was alive. And… I'm just glad that we got rid of the bad part of her that was still left. Cause maybe she's the digitally remastered boxed set again? Somewhere? You know?"

"Yeah," Sam says, and he sounds like he really does know. "Totally."

Dean is silent, because jesus, he never thought of it that way. They aren't in the business of setting souls to rest, they're in the business of _killing _shit. He'd never realized there were other ways of looking at it. Twenty-two years of doing this and the thought had never occurred to him that these bones he kept burning, the vengeful spirits he was wasting, were just little parts of people that got left behind. He doesn't know shit about theology, doesn't know if he believes in god or in the devil or whatever the fuck, but it makes some sense, what Claire is saying. And he's kind of comforted by it. Because maybe he doesn't just destroy things. Maybe he helps make them whole, too.

That'd be the Vicodin's kicking in.

"Let's do your arm, Sam," Dean says, pushes himself upright. And _fucking Christ _the meds might be coming on but not fast enough, because his hip feels like it's connected to every nerve ending in his body, pain jarring through his teeth and in the backs of his eyeballs.

"Jesus," Sam says, eyes widening as Dean's face contorts. "What'd she _do _to you, man?"

"Fuck," Dean groans in reply. He leans back in the chair, breathes for a moment, then tugs up his t-shirt and pulls his jeans down a little to take a look.

"Oh, _man,_" Claire says, puts out a hand like she's going to touch his hip, then withdraws. It looks like a magenta sunset, purple clouds and bursts of red, hints of yellow in a vicious stripe arcing across his skin.

"Maybe I should ice it," Dean says, tries hard not to worry. His fucking _hip. _The whole leg was pretty destroyed, but the hip is undoubtedly the worst of it, took the brunt of the surgeries, and has the most hardware – a couple six-inch titanium pins and god knows what else, Dean's got a list somewhere but he didn't memorize it.

It took him a month and a half just to be able to sit upright for more than five minutes without wanting to put a bullet through his skull, another two months before he was out of a wheelchair and onto a walker, and almost another month after that before they let him anywhere near crutches or a cane.

He knows that at some point he's going to have to have another surgery on it, probably more than one, but he was really hoping that day wouldn't come for a long-ass time. He hopes to god that this doesn't hurry it along.

"Claire," he says, easing himself forward so he's perched on the edge of the armchair. "Could you pass me that duffle over there?"

She does, and he rummages around, finds the first aid kit.

"Strip," Dean tells Sam, and Sam glances at Claire hesitantly.

"You want me to leave the room?" she asks, makes to stand.

"No, I – it's fine." Sam gets out of his jacket and flannel without too much pain, but the t-shirt is another story.

"We're gonna have to cut this off," Dean says. "God. No wonder we don't have any fuckin' clothes."

He unsheathes his knife and slices through the thin material without much trouble, helps Sam wiggle out of the shreds, glances up to see Claire staring at them, mouth slightly open.

"No t-shirts were harmed in the making of this film?" Dean says, not sure what her problem is.

She shakes herself, seems to remember where she is. "Sorry," she says, flaps her hands. "Keep doing… that."

Dean cocks an eyebrow, shrugs, turns back to Sam, who's holding his bad arm to his bare chest, bangs in his face, looking cold and miserable.

Dean works as fast as he can, folds up the vestiges of Sam's shirt and uses it to tuck between his elbow and his body, binds the arm to his chest with an ace bandage and secures it with a couple safety pins.

"How's that feel?" he asks.

"Tight," Sam says.

Dean does up the buttons of Sam's shirt, shaking his head. "I thought I'd get to quit doing this forever when you turned four, dude."

"Not my fault," Sam says petulantly, holding an icepack to his shoulder.

Dean leans back in the armchair, cracks another icepack and settles it on his hip, feels the Vicodin wave pick him up at last, smooth things out, his limbs going liquid and everything getting brighter, like the sun has been turned on. The pain finally manageable.

"You guys are staying for a few days, right?" Claire says. "Cause no way am I letting you leave in this condition."

"We should at least stay tonight," Sam says. "I can't drive right now."

"Yeah," Dean says. "Tonight for sure."

Claire gives him a little sidelong questioning glance that's not too hard to interpret, and he hoists himself so he's sitting all the way upright. "Vicodin," he says meaningfully, and she grins.

"I'm gonna make a sandwich," she says. "You guys hungry?"

"Yeah," Dean says, but Sam shakes his head, grimaces at the movement.

"Think I'm gonna go upstairs and lie down."

"How bout you stay down here, so we can keep an eye on you?" Dean suggests. "Just in case."

"Nothin's going to happen to me," Sam grumbles, but he stretches out on the bed anyway, careful of his shoulder. Dean leans over and props him up on a couple of pillows, cause lying flat's a bitch when you've got a chest injury.

Dean lets Claire give him a hand up, because fuck it, he needs one. She does it so naturally, like it's no big deal, just holds out a hand like _of course _she's gonna help him up, why would there be any question? For some reason, it doesn't embarrass him the same way it does when Sam does it. Maybe cause she appreciates his body in a way that most people never will.

He trails her into the kitchen, can feel his hip pound even through twenty layers of analgesic.

"I'm going to go outside and have a cigarette," he says.

"I'll come."

They settle onto the top step, Dean's mouth tightening a little as he gets himself down.

Claire eyes him with concern. "Dean," she says. "Why do you do this? I mean, I just don't get why you don't, I dunno, apply for disability and sit at home drinking beer all day. Not that I think you'd do that. I'm sure you'd do something worthwhile. But you know what I mean."

"I've always done this," Dean says, because how the fuck else can he explain it? He _can't _do anything else, can't even picture himself doing anything else. He's a hunter, like Claire is a woman and the sky is bigger than a breadbox. Fact of life. He adds for good measure, "Someone's gotta do it. And why not me?"

"Don't smoke that yet," Claire says, leaning forward, gently touches her mouth to his.

His hand automatically flutters to her shoulder, and she licks her way along his closed lips, breaks the seal.

And they just sit there, making out, like they're in their freshman year of high school and second base is still a big deal. No urgency behind it, languid, slow, Claire's hands trailing through his hair, ducking under his jacket and t-shirt to press cold against his skin.

Dean pulls her a little closer, wraps an arm around her shoulders, lets his other hand come up to touch her face. Funny how as soon as a girl's lips touch his, his eyes slam shut, lids pressed together until they break apart. He can feel Claire's heart beat through the soft skin just behind her ear, and he breaks their kiss to work his way over there, tastes smoke from the fire earlier. She makes a breathy little sound, half gasp and half sigh, and he moves lower down her neck, fastens his mouth on her collarbone, nosing aside her wool sweater. She says, "Dean," low and heavy, and he presses his mouth over hers again, lets the hand that's not wound in her hair trace its way under her sweater, skim over her breasts, braless under her thin t-shirt. He swipes a thumb across her nipple and he can feel it harden through the soft cotton, and she gasps out, "I'm going to make you a grilled cheese sandwich."

"That a metaphor?" he mumbles against her neck.

"No it's – a special – _oh_ – I don't usually eat – animal – products – " and then her mouth is occupied again.

After a few minutes Dean slips a hand between the band of her skirt and her skin and she pushes him away, says, "Later, later, save the rest for later, we gotta go inside, make a sandwich…"

"Fuck the sandwich," Dean says, trying to kiss her again, but she turns her head and he gets a mouthful of jaw, which is nice, too, so he does what he can with that and she lets him for a moment, then says, "No, _really, _we have to stop, not right now, can't…" She ducks out from under his arms and stands up, panting a little, Dean's hand trailing down her ass as she pulls her sweater around her body, gives him a little grin that shoots straight to his cock.

"Do you like tomato on your grilled cheese?"

"Claire…"

"Do you?"

"Whatever," Dean says, resigned. "However you make it, I'll eat it."

"Is _that _a metaphor?" she asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Dean says. "It was."

She reaches down to help him up, but he shakes his head. "Cigarette," he says. "Now more necessary than ever. Thanks for that."

She shakes her head a little as he knocks one from his pack.

"What?" he says, filter gripped between his teeth, looking up to see her watching him.

"You're gonna die young," she says morosely, and he lets out a surprised laugh.

"Probably," he agrees, lights his cigarette and lets out a long breath of smoke. "Ain't gonna be lung cancer that does it, though."

She shrugs, turns to go inside, and Dean feels the smile fade from his face a little. It's not like he has a deathwish, but for a moment he _does _wonder what he's doing to himself. Why he doesn't do what she said; have the government throw him a disability check every month, get a job in a garage or somewhere that'd be easy on his leg, invest in a lazy-boy and a widescreen TV. He grins a little at the image, because it's just _ridiculous_… for one thing, he'd get fat. Which wouldn't fly. And for another, _yeah fucking right. _He might not be exactly happy right now, but who's actually happy? He'd be fuckin' _miserable _in a life like that. That's Sam's territory, except instead of the lazy-boy he'd have one of those polished mahogany desks, instead of a garage he'd wear suits every day, sit in an office with huge windows – cause yeah, Sammy would totally have a corner office. He'd be a _great _fucking lawyer, and Dean knows it.

His heart clenches a little at the thought that, as soon as they find their father, Sam'll disappear again, back to the world that Dean can't touch, doesn't want to touch. For a second he doesn't even know why he'd want to find John, when he's got Sam. Seems like he can only have one at a time. And if he had to choose – but let's not go there, cause it's not an option to drop the hunt for their father. They have to find him. And besides, Sam'd be out of there like a flash if they didn't have the goal of John ahead of them, and then Dean would be alone. Again.

He realizes with a start that his breathing has halted, and he takes a gulp of air, forces it out, repeats the process. He takes a drag of his cigarette, thinks that, fuck, maybe Claire's right, maybe he should do some yoga or whatever – cause he'd been skeptical about acupuncture, but when he's getting regular treatments, he does feel a hell of lot better. And he's pretty sure it's not just placebo. Although who the fuck knows.

He finishes his cigarette, and fuck it, smokes another one. He thinks he's at around number thirteen, maybe fourteen, and its – he checks his watch – coming up to two o'clock, which is… less than ideal. At least he's counting. Usually he thinks of cigarettes in negative terms – _how many do I have left _– rather than positive – _how many have I smoked. _So, yeah, that's a good step. He counts, just to be sure – six left. So, yeah. Fourteen. Well, whatever, he got up early. Ish.

He's just about done when Claire knocks on the window of the kitchen, shouts, "Grilled cheese," loud and muffled by the glass.

He nods in her direction, though he can't see her, takes one last, long drag, crushes out the butt and begins the process of getting himself up, which is a lot fucking harder than it usually is, cause his hip has stiffened and his knee's gone funny on him again, though thankfully it isn't locking up.

Claire's gone way overboard, made a whole plate of grilled cheese, oozing butter, and she's already halfway through one of them.

"I eat cheese when I'm having a hard day," she explains, licking grease off her finger in a way that really should be gross but _so isn't._

Dean props his crutches up on the table, lowers himself down slowly in the chair next to her.

"Here's one with tomato," she says. "I figure you need vegetables."

"Probably do," Dean says, takes a bite, and _damn, _grilled cheese is_ good. _He'd forgotten, always chalked it up as baby food, but this – this is definitely man food.

"Good?" she says, and he lets out an "Mmmpphf" around his mouthful.

"I threw a little basil in there," she says. "Some white pepper and garlic. It's sourdough bread."

"S'awesome," Dean says, and licks his fingers, cause hey, she did it.

"Kind of messy," she says, then grabs his wrist without warning, brings his hand up and puts the tip of his pointer finger into her mouth as his own mouth drops open, nearly loses his chewed-up wad of sandwich. She slides his finger in her mouth up to the second knuckle, then drops it and takes another bite of her sandwich.

"You trying to kill me?" he asks, reaches down under the table to do a little much-need adjusting.

"Your fingers taste like cigarettes," she says.

"Quit lecturin'. You're worse than Sam."

"I wasn't lecturing, merely observing." She finishes her sandwich, reaches for another one. "Eat," she tells Dean. "I made like, forty of them. And you need to gain a little weight."

She takes another one, because he's hungry, and yeah, he does need to gain weight. He's definitely not as skinny as he was when he got out of the hospital, but he could probably stand to gain ten pounds or so. He'd been worried that the opposite would happen, that his decreased ability to move would mean he'd get pudgy, but he's still too thin, ribs and vertebrae too clear under his skin.

He rips off a bite, says, "We should save some for Sam."

"Cold grilled cheese? I don't think so. I'll make him more when he wakes up. These are for us."

"When you cheese out, you do it all the way, huh?"

"Oh yeah," she says. "Oh yeah."

Claire eats three grilled cheese and Dean eats four, and there are still two left over.

"Oh," Claire moans, doubles over, arms clasped over her middle. "God."

"I could go another round," Dean says. "Gimme a minute."

"Yeah right," Claire says.

Dean's feeling a little sleepy, actually, grease and painkillers and excess tension all coming to a boil of heavy-lidded eyes and nodding head.

He yawns, stretches a little, careful of his hip. "I'm gonna have a cigarette," he says, glares at her to pre-empt any complaining. "Then I'm taking a nap."

She puts a light hand on his bad knee, squeezes carefully. "Didn't get much sleep last night, huh? Wonder why that is."

"Nightmares, you know… dreamt that some crazy tree-hugger kept rolling all over me."

She laughs, and he grins back at her, starts to his feet, puts a hand on her shoulder for balance as he reaches for his crutches.

"If you were staying here, which I know you're not, do you think we'd date?" she asks unexpectedly. "Don't get nervous, I'm not being the clingy-attached girl. I'm just wondering."

Dean blinks for a moment, considers it. "Yeah. We could. Why not?"

"We'd probably break up though."

"Probably."

Claire sighs a little. "If we were dating, would you quit smoking for me?"

"Claire," Dean says.

"Sorry, sorry. If you won't quit for Sam, I wouldn't have a chance."

Dean laughs a little. "If we're done with this hypothetical conversation, I'm gonna…"

"Right. Go."

Dean smokes quickly, and takes a piss against the side of the house while he's at it, keeping a worried eye out for Claire – he just really doesn't feel like hiking up the stairs right now. When he comes back inside, she's washed up the dishes and is leaning her elbows against the counter, talking on her cellphone.

"Fuck no," she's saying. "Tell him he has to tell her _today. _She should know what she's getting herself into. Hang on." She covers the mouthpiece with her hand, says, "You napping?"

"Yeah," he says. "Think so."

She nods, goes back to the phone, and Dean hears a tinny _Who were you talking to?_

She winks at Dean. "This beautiful man who showed up at my door yesterday to do nasty things to me."

_Omigod what?!_

Dean grins, smacks her ass with one of his crutches, and she gives him a mock-offended grimace.

Sam's fast asleep on the foldout bed, his face uncomfortable with pain even in sleep, and Dean can't help himself, lays two fingers on Sam's neck; his heart's beating steady, and his breath is regular, so Dean steals a cushion from the armchair and lowers himself down next to his brother.

Sam's eyes flutter open and he says sleepily, "What're you doing?"

"Napping," Dean says.

"Here with me?"

Dean rolls his eyes. "Yes, here with you. This is my bed, remember?"

"Mmm," Sam says. "We gonna cuddle?"

"Shut the fuck up and go back to sleep."

Sam smiles sleepily and his eyes shut again.

Dean tries to get comfortable, puts an arm behind his head and the cushion under his knee, is so sick of sleeping on his back he could puke. He used to sleep on his stomach, but that hurts too much now, and sleeping on his side, even his good left side, is out of the question unless he's got a body pillow – or, as he discovered last night, a body.

He listens to the murmur of Claire's voice in the kitchen and thinks that yeah, he _would_ date her, though he doubts it'd end well. He wonders if it's just the circumstances that are making him feel this way, the fact that he hadn't been laid in eight months before her, but really, he thinks he just _likes _her.

He closes his eyes, listens to Sam breathing next to him, listens to his own breathing for a moment. There's a low rattle in his chest, two packs a day sitting in his lungs, and he swallows, tries to breathe deep and regular, like Claire keeps telling him. In, out. In, out. Breathe. Breathe.

"_Breathe through it, come on, buddy."_

_Dean doesn't know who's talking to him, just knows that his entire body is frozen in pain, doesn't even know where the source is. He knows he's in the hospital, which, score one for him, cause he thinks this might be the first time he's managed to locate himself, but fucked if he can remember what he's doing there or why it feels like someone's cutting through his bones with a dull butter knife._

"_Give him the morphine," the voice says, and it's no one Dean recognizes. He tries to move, finds that he's restrained somehow, an unfamiliar hand pressing down on his chest, and his legs –_

_He gets his eyes open, and for a second everything's blurry, but then he's looking up at his right leg, suspended from the ceiling and – jesus – looking like it's been skewered by eight pounds of metal, cutting through his flesh. Bile rises in his throat and he feels his stomach churn, but there's nothing in there, so he just retches, coughs, his whole body flaring up in pain again._

"_Dad," he gets out, looks around for his father, but there's no one there save for a brawny, nervous-looking orderly and a stern-faced doctor._

"_You have to hold still, son, all right?" the doctor says, prepping a needle, doesn't look at Dean._

"_Where's my… where is…" He knows without finishing the question that his dad's not there – that much he does remember from last time he surfaced from the haze of drugs. "Don't give me that," he says, seeing the needle come towards him. "Please, don't."_

"_It's just going to put you to sleep," the doctor says. "Don't worry."_

"_No," Dean says, because even with this pain he can't bear the thought of going under again. "No, no, don't, don't fucking touch me, please!"_

_The orderly holds him down with two huge hands, and Dean finds that he's too weak to do much more than thrash his head around ineffectually. _

"_Please," he says, "please, fuck, where's my, please don't, please, pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease_

"DEAN!"

Dean strikes out blindly at the hands gripping his shoulders, feels his fist connect with someone that lets out a pained grunt, opens his eyes to see Sam kneeling over him, doubled over in pain.

"Sam?" Dean says, unbelieving, then remembers where he is. "Fuck," he says, hauls himself upright, "Fuck, Sam, did I get your ribs?"

"S'okay, man," Sam says, puts up a hand, "s'okay, _owwww._ Jesus Christ, Dean, what the hell were you dreaming about?"

"Dreaming," Dean repeats stupidly.

"You were freaking out, man," Sam says. "Ow. You were thrashing around, muttering weird shit, fuck, I thought you were gonna hurt yourself. Turns out you were just trying to hurt _me._"

Dean just drinks in the sight of his little brother, tries to calm down. "What'd I say?" he asks, praying it was nothing incriminating.

"I don't know, man, I was too busy trying to wake you up."

"Jesus," Dean says.

"What _was _that?"

Dean shakes his head, tries to clear it, gives his brother a weak grin that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Dreamed you tied me down and made me listen to shitty emo music."

"Dude," Sam says. "No, you _didn't._"

"I don't remember, Sam," Dean says, eases his legs over the side of the bed. "Naptime's fuckin' over."

"Yeah," Sam says. "I'll say." He watches as Dean hauls himself to his feet, goes into the kitchen. He hears the sound of running water.

He did hear what Dean was saying, but no way is he telling his brother that. He was saying _Dad, _and _please, _and _where, _in different combinations, all of which made Sam's heart sink low and painful in his chest. Jesus.

He hears footsteps on the stairs, and Claire comes into the living room, looks around.

"You guys done resting?"

"Yeah," Sam says absently, gazing towards the kitchen. "Guess we are."

He hears the front door slam.

"You were out for a while," Claire says. "Wanna watch a movie?"

"Sure," Sam says, forces himself to turn and face her. "What movie?"

They end up deciding on something called "Harold and Maude" – or, Claire decides on "Harold and Maude," and Sam shrugs his okay.

Dean comes back in to find them sitting side-by-side on the bed, remote poised in Claire's hand.

"Good!" she says brightly. "You're back. We're watching a movie."

"Really," Dean says. "What movie?"

He lets out a long groan when she tells him, smacks Sam on his good arm. "Dude, you picked out a movie about an eighty-year old woman who gets it on with a teenage kid."

"I didn't pick it!" Sam says indignantly as Dean settles himself beside Claire.

"It's beautiful, you're gonna love it," Claire promises, presses play.

Beautiful, Sam thinks. Fuck.

He ends up kind of enjoying it, though, and a few sneaked glances at his brother's face show that Dean's at least entertained, though it doesn't stop him from making snide comments about sagging tits and what else might be sagging.

The rest of the day passes slowly, lazily. To Sam it feels like they're on vacation. Dean starts drinking at around six o'clock, which is pretty typical vacation-mode Dean, and Claire has a few, herself. Sam, because he's freakin' _concussed, _sticks to water. They order a couple pizzas, Claire spouting off something about cheese and desperate times calling for desperate measures, and they both try to pretend like Dean's not a little too pale, a little too jumpy, having a little too much trouble getting up when he sits down.

Claire washes the dishes while Dean excuses himself to go outside, and Sam ices his shoulder and ribs, which won't quit on him. Rib injuries _suck. _He has to think about how he's doing _everything_, from breathing to laughing to eating to taking a crap. It's like he's getting a little taste of Dean's day-to-day life – the way he has to plan how he's going to get from one side of the room to another, plan whether or not he can make it up a flight of stairs, how he's going to sit down, get up. It's fucking depressing, that's what it is.

"We should leave early tomorrow," Dean says as they brush their teeth. Dean's sitting on the closed toilet seat, leans over the spit into the sink.

"Yeah," Sam says, shoots a glance at Dean. "Claire's pretty cool."

"Yup," Dean says neutrally, pulls himself to his feet.

"You guys gonna keep in touch?"

Dean shrugs, maneuvers himself around Sam and towards the door.

"You don't want to stay a few more days?" Sam asks, can't help himself, though he knows he's probably pushing too hard. "We could."

"What's the point, Sam?" Dean asks. "Better to just keep moving."

"I guess," Sam says, watches his brother's retreating back. " 'Night, Dean."

"G'night," Dean says over his shoulder.

Sam lies in his bed that night and tries not to listen to the sounds coming from downstairs, the squeak of fold-out couch springs, soft moans, muffled laughter.

He gets where Dean's coming from. Why bother staying an extra day or two? Their lives are regulated by movement, defined by it. Even at Stanford, Sam felt the pull. Not away from Jess, never away from Jess, but _away, _yes.

He puts a pillow over his head, but even through the thick fabric he hears Claire cry out his brother's name, and he feels his eyes fill suddenly, surprisingly, with tears. Not cause of the awkward, though, yeah, that too, but because Dean _likes _her and she likes him, and Sam liked Jess, loved her, loved her so much, and Jess used to call out his name like that, and he doesn't know if anyone ever will, ever again. Doesn't know if he wants anyone to.

Claire cries out again, and Sam feels so _lonely _it's ridiculous – loneliness for himself and loneliness for his brother, loneliness for his whole fucked-up family. He thinks about Dean, muttering in his sleep, _Please, _and _dad, _and _where, _and thinks about four years away and waking up alone in the hospital and the ghosts of mothers and about bodies that always hurt, and he falls asleep with his hand fisted in his mouth like when he was little and his father was away for weeks on end and Dean would sing to him low and soft till his voice faded away and everything went dark.

They leave early the next morning, like Dean wanted, after Claire feeds them a breakfast of yogurt and honey and granola that Sam watches Dean pretend to like, to make her happy.

"You can always stay here," Claire says. "If you're ever on the west coast again. You think we'll ever be on the west coast again?"

"Our job takes us everywhere," Dean says, then, "yeah. I think we'll probably be around these parts again."

Sam goes into the living room to get the duffle bags.

Claire leans up to Dean, kisses him deep, says in his ear, "Even if I'm dating someone, we could still sleep together, okay? I'm a fan of open relationships."

Dean laughs, and she puts her arm around his waist, fits herself up against him. He manages to prop his crutches up on the wall behind him so he can put his arms over her shoulders, leans into her, lets her take some of his weight because she's tall and strong and she can.

"You should email every so often," she says. "Just let me know you're alive. Because otherwise, every time I think of you, it'll just be worry. _Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet?_ But if you update me, I can think about other things, like this." She dips a hand down the back of his jeans, squeezes his ass.

"Jesus, Claire," Dean says. "Morbid, much?"

She kisses him again, and Sam comes back into the room, carrying the smallest duffle, the only one his ribs will let him take.

Dean carries the rest, and Claire doesn't walk them out to the car, doesn't stand at the doorway and watch them go, just says, "Thank you so much," and hugs Sam close for so long that Dean feels himself getting a little jealous, until she turns back to him and sticks her tongue in his mouth.

"We could have been such good friends," she says sadly. "Does that sound sappy? Well, I feel a little sappy."

"It was really … I'm glad we met you," Sam says. "This was fun. Kind of? Except for, you know."

"Good luck with your artist thing," Dean says. "Your artist colony. It's… it's gonna be awesome."

Sam never thought he'd hear anything like that coming from his brother's mouth.

Dean gets behind the wheel, lights a cigarette before starting the car.

"I don't know how long I can hold out," he says. "We're probably gonna have to stop in an hour or so."

"That's fine," Sam says. "We're going to need something to eat, anyway."

"Yeah, something real, instead of that hippie granola shit," Dean snorts, takes a drag of his cigarette and ashes out the window. "Seriously. What _is _granola, anyway? Ground-up wood?"

"Claire was awesome," Sam says. "Even with the granola." He just wants Dean to say it, say something.

"She was," Dean agrees, takes another drag. "She was fucking awesome. And Sam, the things she did in bed…"

"Don't," Sam says, "jesus, I don't wanna know."

Dean laughs, then says, "Never thought I'd be with a girl like that. You know. Long skirts. Stupid wool sweaters. But… she was…"

"Yeah," Sam says. "Yeah."

Dean sighs, shifts in his seat a little, hip already bugging him. "When you're gone," Dean says casually, "maybe I'll call. See if she wants sit shotgun for a while. She'd make a damn good hunter."

"What do you mean, gone?" Sam asks.

Dean flaps his hand vaguely, scatters cigarette ash over his lap. "I dunno, when we find Dad and you go back. To school, or wherever."

"Dean," Sam says slowly, because he's got to make his brother understand something_._ "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving you. Not again."

"Dude," Dean says, "I didn't mean—"

"Are you listening to me?" Sam asks. "I'm. Not. Leaving. Ever. If we find Dad and we can kill this thing – I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm not gonna just bail on you. I'm _here, _Dean, I'm _here_. I know I wasn't, not for a long time, and I – fuck, dude, I know I wasn't there when you needed me, when Dad took off—"

"Sam," Dean says, "Sam, stop it, I just meant—"

"Dean," Sam says. "Jess is dead, okay? There's nothing—you're all I've got, man. Okay? I'm not. I'm not leaving you. Okay? I'm not fucking leaving you. If I go anywhere – you're comin' with me."

Dean lets out a shaky breath of smoke, keeps his eyes on the road, pulls on his cigarette. "It ever occur to you that you may be headed somewhere I don't wanna go? Like, straight towards _chickville?_"

"Chickville?" Sam says, raising an eyebrow. "Seriously, dude? Chickville? That sounds like a place you might like, actually."

"Shut up," Dean mutters, flicks his cigarette out the window.

"I'm not gonna leave you," Sam says again, just for good measure, and leans down to turn on the radio. It's some alt-country thing that blasts tinnily into the silence of the car, and Dean winces.

"Put on Zeppelin," he demands, and Sam complies, slips the cassette into the deck. It starts playing where it left off from the last time it was ejected.

_Baby, baby, baby, babe I'm gonna leeeaaavvveeeeee you… I said baby, you know I'm gonna leave you…_

Dean looks at Sam at the same time Sam looks at Dean, and they crack up, Sam clutching his ribs and wincing, Dean trying to keep the wheel straight.

But their laughter dies down eventually, and Dean gropes for his cigarettes, one-handedly wrestles one from the pack and lights it, ducks his head against the wind that pours in from the open window.

Sam quiets, his ribs pounding, watches Dean smoke silently next to him, watches the black road stretch out in front of them, the grey sky opening up to a mist of rain. The song is much, much longer than he remembered.

THE END!!! THANK YOU FOR READING!!! MORE TO COME!!!


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